The Maid
by Acciodoublestuffed
Summary: AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.
1. Belle isn't a princess

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** Belle isn't a princess.

* * *

Belle waits at the crossroads tapping her foot impatiently, because, of course, Eoghain is late with the eggs, _again_.

At this rate she will never finish supper on time, and gods know, her employer is nothing if not punctual.

She had understood when the paunchy man had declared to her that, under no circumstances, could he be prevailed upon to drive his chicken cart any further into the forest—she hadn't liked this declaration, but she had understood it. Eoghain, as well as the rest of the town, fears her employer worse than plague, and only slightly less than ogres. Which is saying something.

The townspeople call him by many names: savior, monster, Dark One, father, Rumpelstiltskin, _spinner_—though, the last few are whispered over a dying day's fire, for rumor has it, the weaver is want to remember his past life, and the villagers even more wanting in his forgetting of their past enmity.

They call him by many names; Belle just calls him 'sir.'

She huffs, throwing up her arms in exasperation. She can wait no longer for eggs. The father and son would simply have to suffice themselves with thrown-together potato stew. She trudges back into the forest, the opposite direction of her own, equally isolated homestead, up the hill to the rather fine house she waits upon. The place is no estate (and Belle has seen estates), but it's the largest in the village, perhaps even the largest out of the surrounding three.

She's not unhappy to work there, and what's more he pays well—even if thread is a strange currency. At least she can wrap it about her ankle so as not to lose it.

Belle is no pampered princess, to be sure, but that doesn't mean she likes her current line of work (nor, was she a strapping, young, leader of masses and that didn't stop the duke from ordering her to the front lines), but she must eat, and like all war refugees, she knows hunger all too well.

* * *

Belle met the spinner only once before his _transformation_. It is just after she and her father Maurice, just two out of the mass of all those displaced by the ongoing fighting, pouring into the (now-secure) lands, stumble into the town that she decides will become their new home, for now at least. They are battered and half-starved, and looking for healing and privacy—particularly the later, her father being what he is.

She leaves her father to rest on a stone under the shade of a Birch tree at the edge of the village, while she continues on to search out a place for them. Belle is direct, too direct for a woman, but all the same, she goes into the first yard she sees. She approaches the unimposing house, where a poorly dressed man and boy (soon to be young man) tote a cart laden with battered spools and bolts of homespun clothe. "Excuse me, sir?" she asks.

The man looks up and around to both sides, for surely the voice isn't addressing him. _No one _would ever address him with the title of 'sir.' He looks to her, for it is a woman's voice, "Are you speaking to me?"

"Yes, _you_." She steps closer. The man takes a step, a limp really, for on closer inspection she sees that he is lame and carries a large walking stick, obscuring her view of the charming boy—she remembers a page with that same chocolate look about him; she remembers the way his brains and blood had looked against the boulders on the battlefields of Avonlea.

Belle shakes her head, "I need some help."

"Then, it seems, you've come to the wrong man," he answers, turning his head down from her and goes back to tugging on the cart.

"Surely you can help. It's just, my father and I are looking for a someplace, a home, really, but not in the village."

"Oh, papa, Old Saorla's house."

"_Bae_," the father hisses, but the boy is not deterred.

The little thing walks up to Belle, and he's younger than she thought at first, for he still knows no fear of strangers. That'll change. "It's in the glen, past the old bridge, made of thatch and close to the stream, what's more. Old Saorla passed winter last, but the house is still there. The roof too. My friends and I play out by it sometimes."

She smiles her brightest, _courtly_ smile (she'd rather give him her field smile, but she hasn't seen that one in sometime), "Thank you, good sir."

The boy chuckles, and then, of all the silly things, replies, "No matter, my lady."

Belle almost laughs. She turns to leave, giving a final look to the boy and a nod to the father, who she knows sees the action, but does not acknowledge it. A call stops her.

"I'm Baelfire." The son points to the man she can't see behind the cart, "And that is my father, Rumpelstiltskin."

"I'm Belle."

* * *

She is not there, the day the soldiers die, nor for the children's homecoming. Belle is always a little too late—her curse.

That and the clumsy streak, though that she usually chalks the clumsy up to more of a general disability. Most days, she is simply glad she has all her appendages intact, which is more than she could say for most. That and her father. She is glad to still have him, intact or no.

Needless to say, things are quite bad when she starts to look for work. Of course, there is none to be had. With the children returned by the Dark One, field hands and attendants to watch the cart on market day are all too numerous. Belle cannot find anyone willing to hire her, even for the meager sum she asks.

It isn't until Eoghain, the egg-cart man, mentions something about someone needing a maid that Belle thinks there's hope. Then Eoghain mentions just exactly _who_ needs the maid.

"It's _him_, isn't it?" she realizes.

The man shifts from foot to foot, awkward as one of his chickens, but all the same offers her a ride to the crossroads in his dirty cart. "I'll go no farther than this, mum," he tells her.

_Mum_, did she really look that old, she wonders, but they sold the hand mirror at their first stop, so Belle's no way of finding a definitive answer. "Thank you, Eoghain. This is fine, really," she lilts and he gives her that look she always gets when she says something with too high an accent, reminding everyone just how far the ogres can throw down the mighty. All the same, he points her in the direction of Rumpelstiltskin's new house.

She walks on alone, her skirt catching on overgrown weeds and thistles. It's tattered, but it's the only one she owns. She traded her clothes all along the way, the last of her Sunday-skirts, which itself was hardly presentable, four towns back in exchange for milk and a crust of hard bread.

Belle tops the hill Eoghain had pointed out to her and comes upon the grand house, _wood_ and _stone brickwork_. Also, by the look of the lay, she bets it has something of a foundation and in all likelihood wooden floors too. Imagine that.

She trudges to the front door; no time like the present. Belle girds herself, taking a deep breath, but not too deep, for her tunic isn't in much better shape than her skirt, and she can't have it falling to shreds before the job interview, and knocks on the door.

Where there had been rustling within the house, a hammer-silence falls. She raps again, "Hello? Anybody home?"

The door opens sharply, "What business have you, to disturb us?"

Belle hears a muffled noise inside, something like the sound she makes when her father used to tease her at state dinners, but when she tries to peer around the lame spinner, the_ Dark One_, counters her step for step. This rubs her wrong, but then she realizes something. Belle's head tilts to the side, "Your leg's healed."

He pauses, but then answers, "So it is."

She looks up at him. She's seen him down at the village on market day, and this is not the fear-filled spinner she'd met on the road, but if she _squints_ just right, yes there, she can see it, through the newly purchased finery and the mottled, shining skin. Belle can still see the man who hid behind the cart. "You probably don't remember me, but—"

"_Belle_!"

She smiles, as the mud-colored head peaks around his father's waist. "What are you doing on this side of the forest?"

"Yes, what _are_ you doing on our side of the forest, I wonder?"

Your forest, eh? Belle knew this game, no matter if you stand on marble or an unruly patch of dandelions, condescension is nine times out of ten a sloppily-constructed cover for fear. "They told me, down at the village that you're having a difficult time finding a maid?"

"Yes, it would seem so," he says, guarded, but not catching her meaning just yet.

Belle shrugs her shoulders, "Well, here I am. I'll be your maid."

The boy's face lights up; his father's falls. "_You? _A maid?" he questions, for her accent wouldn't usually be found carrying brooms and scrubbing out chamber pots.

She sighs. Yes, yes, she wasn't always dirt poor and desperate to feed herself and her father but, must they go over that again, right _now_? "Aye, a maid. So are you going to hire me or not, because if the answer is not, then I'd like to be on my way. It'll be dark soon, and I don't know these woods all that well yet."

He crinkles his brow, but (for Belle can see it all play out on his features—even colored as they are) he makes his choice—she hopes for them both it's the right one. "Well, considering we're not likely to get another offer, you'll have to do." Rumpelstiltskin waves his hand grandly, be here tomorrow," he turns to shut the door, but raises a finger to her face, "_early_."

"See you tomorrow, Belle," she hears Baelfire squeak, before the door shuts, and the lock after it.

Belle starts the long walk home, wondering just exactly what she's agreed to with this deal.


	2. In for a penny, in for a pound

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** In for a penny in for a pound

* * *

Belle leaves before first light. She does not bother with leaving a note for her father, for what good would it do? Instead, she's left an obvious meal (simple foods—the only kind they can afford and her father can manage on his own), the cup (their only cup) filled with water and a spoonful of sleep syrup, enough to keep him a-bed until her return. She'll be back by dinner, at least, she hopes to be.

She crosses to the other side of the forest, holding her tattered dress rather high, for it can only take so much wear and tear, before there won't be any left _to wear_. It chafes her skin, still damp from the washing she'd given it the night before in the stream running behind their little thatch-roofed, lime-washed hovel. It's not much, hardly worth being called a home, but at least they've a roof over their heads, though as the once-spinner's son had warned, said roof is in need of patching. Come sunnier, warmer days, she'll have to climb up with mud daubing. Maurice would be the best one to create the mixture, but seeing as he's apt as not to be of use when the day comes, Belle expects she'll have to muddle through on her own.

The path looks different in the pre-dawn light, and the air is still cold—Belle can see her breath. Suddenly, it feels like those first mornings she'd spent on the battlefield, when she was still cutting her first soldier's tooth over the fact that one generally wakes up with frost on their bedroll and little more than brimstone-laced water (to keep the appetites better at bay) and hard bread for breakfast.

Ah, well those days were behind her—literally.

She finally makes it to the house all in one piece. Her dress too, for that matter. Belle pauses in front of the door, unsure whether or not to knock, not wishing to wake the household, for it was still before dawn. Her new master had said early, after all.

She reaches for the doorknob, when the decision is made for her.

Rumpelstilskin pulls open the door abruptly. "Ah, at least we know you can obey an order. Follow me," he says, walking past her.

He leads her around the right of their fine house, where she sees a small shed that must serve as their larder and a stone oven, just off to the side. "You will serve the meals for myself and my son. Take what you need from the pantry."

"I understand," she says. Common enough tasks.

He moves quickly behind the house, Belle having to hurry to keep apace. "You will clean the house and launder our clothing."

She nods to herself, making a mental list, "Yes."

They've gone all the way around, giving Belle a chance to see where the stream runs behind the place, down the hill a ways—the same stream surely that must run past her own hovel—and now, on the other side, Belle sees two pens, one for pigs and the other for sheep. "You will see to the animals, slop the pigs, tend the sheep, but not the sheering. I'll see to that myself."

No sheering, she noted. "Got it."

"One more thing," he turns to her, stopping back at the front porch. "You will use my wheel to spin straw into gold."

"_What?"_ Belle squeaks.

"A quip. Not serious," he says, laughing, "So you're really not from around here then."

"No, I'm not. What's that to do with spinning straw into gold?"

"It's a saying, common about these lands. Around here, we say it to mean an impossible task.

She nods. "I see."

"Well, I suppose breakfast is in order." He turns and reenters the house, holding the door for her to follow. "For small tasks, you may use the hearth. The heating of water and the like."

"Right, yes," she says, looking around, for this is her first time seeing the inside of the Dark One's home. It's small, but well furnished. On the right is a bed, and a ladder, that she assumes leads to a loft. In front of them there's the fireplace and dining table. To the left, she spots the once-spinner's spinning wheel. She smiles at the idea of the Dark One spinning wool to sell at market. Against the wall, past the wheel stands a desk with a few books—she'd have to get a closer look at that soon, but now is not the time.

Rumpelstiltskin takes note of her wandering eyes, "Well don't just stand there gawking. You've work to do."

"Sorry," she adds, heading past him to the hearth. She spots a the large black pot, and figures it'll do well enough for boiling water, but as she bends over, she feels a tugging on her sleeve.

"No, no, this won't do at all." Rumpelstiltskin pushes the pot back down to the ground, and she's forced to release it, standing. He scrutinizes her, and she clasps her hands and forces herself to still, only to find she's standing at attention—old soldiers' habit die hard (the habits so very much harder to kill than the soldiers themselves). He twirls his finger, and Belle knows he wants her to turn for him. She does so, though her cheeks begin to burn.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

At that, he looks a bit too happy for her liking. _Not quite so frightened of me now, are you old spinnerman, _she thinks to herself. "Well your clothes of course, positively rags. Have you no others, less _threadbare_?"

She answers with a question, "Would I be wearing these if I had a choice?"

_Would I be working for you had I a choice?_

He puts a hand to his chin. "One of these days you'll reach too far when scrubbing floors only to rend a seam. Can't have you well, baring yourself—I've a young child about," he says, his tone half serious, half mocking.

Belle knows she's blushing, but at least part of it comes not from embarrassment, but from pride. He's going to make her ask for clothes, and it eats at her dignity, making her bristle. She raises her chin—if she has to ask, she certainly isn't going to let him see that it bothers her to do so. Indifferently, she shrugs, "You'll have to give me something old of yours or coin then, for I've no cloth to make something better."

He positively grins, "That'd take too long, and why go to all that trouble when I can do you one better." The Dark One raises a glowing hand, and barely touching her torn sleeve again, and Belle is enveloped in a cloud of purple smoke, like that in the summers when she worked in the Gaston's father's estate, in the washing rooms and they had the steam press. The room was always filled with steam clouds—though not _purple_.

When the fog finally recedes into nothing, she looks herself over. He's dressed her simply, but suitably, in a simple brown bodice and skirt, over a white tunic. She's a white apron around her waist, and putting a hand to her head, she feels some sort of headscarf there. He can see the surprise in her expression. "I don't like hair in my soup, dearie."

He's showing off, Belle realizes.

Noting his grin, she's not impressed—for though, already, she likes the feel of this better (and what's more, no whalebone), Belle still remembers the feel of finer cloths than homespun and linen. "Thank you, sir," she says, in earnest, but matching in simplicity.

It's sufficient, but not fawning. Yes, that would be her relationship to her employer.

She turns back to take up the pot again, but as Rumpelstiltskin grabs her hands. She wants to pull away, but forces herself to stand still and not bolt. Turning her hands, he runs his thumbs over her palms, examining the lines and calluses there. "What do you see?"

His eyes slide up from her hands to meet her stare, but then back down. "Middling upbringing, but not unused to hardships—_recent_ hardships. You'll do. No matter how high-born your accent, you're no princess, lass."

Belle scoffs, trying not shiver as he releases her hands, "That's true."

There's a clatter, and both parties turn to see Baelfire come down the ladder by the door. He sleeps in the loft, apparently, she realizes. The young boy comes round the corner, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Belle can't help but giggle at the sight, his hair sticking in all directions. Upon hearing her voice, he perks up, "Belle!"

"Good Morning, young sir."

* * *

The rest of the day finds Belle cleaning—Rumpelstiltskin though the only parent makes no attempt at playing mother hen—and learning where to find everything about the place. By the time she serves their dinner, she's exhausted.

"Hm," Rumpelstiltskin says, after taking his first bite.

"Is there a problem, sir?" The question is becoming a theme, she thinks. However, she's asked the question already well knowing there's no problem. She's made them a simple pottage, a recipe she knows by heart, could make in her sleep, even. Using cabbage and carrots from the larder, as well as a mishmash of spices, only a touch different from those of the Southlands. It's a common meal, but fine—it's her mother's recipe, after all. Belle tries hard not to smirk as she stands behind the table, ready to be sent to or fro.

He frowns at her. Apparently she wasn't hiding that smirk as well as she'd thought. "You can cook well enough, it seems."

Belle smiles, all too pleased with Rumpelstiltskin's hard-won admission, "Glad you think so."

"Yes, tastes wonderful, Belle," Baelfire says between mouthfuls.

As the meal goes on, her employer looks uncomfortable at her prolonged attention to their table—if he hadn't wanted a maid puttering about, she hardly understood why he'd hired her in the first place, besides the fact that he playing at being a landed gentleman though hardly knew the way. Finally, Rumpelstiltskin turns to her, "Go, tend the fire. Burning low, I think."

She wonders if it's her imagination, or if the fire only suddenly took a dip, in tandem with a mild purple glow from a hand hidden below the table. When she hears the clank of spoons in empty bowls, she returns to gather them up.

"After you wash them, you're free to go," the man says.

She nods, taking Baelfire's plate, "Yes, sir."

"Thank you, Belle," the boy says.

She gives him the brightest smile she can muster, "Very welcome, Baelfire."

She makes to leave, all the pots and bowls balanced—always too ambitious, her mother had always said. Belle got that from her father, as her mother ought to have well known, having been the one to marry the dreamer inventor. She struggles, trying to bend and catch the latch with a spare elbow, when it suddenly swings open, unbidden. She turns to see Rumpelstiltskin with a shining hand extended. "Thank you," she says, relieved, and a little surprised too. As she walks over the threshold, she hears him add, "Thank you for dinner."

* * *

The brave idea strikes suddenly, and Belle is nothing if not brave (first for her widower father and then for herself, because that's all she has left for which to be brave).

She has taken the dishes first to the pigsty to toss the leavings, when she realizes just how full the _cocotte _still is. She made much too much for the presumed widower (how else did one come by a boy and an empty bed?), and her father would surely be hungry. She certainly is. They wouldn't miss one casserole oven-pot overnight.

After washing out the bowls, she walks back to the door, slipping the _cocotte_ behind a bush subtly. She enters the house, but finds it empty. Baelfire must be up in his little loft, but where is his father? "Rumpelstiltskin?" she calls.

He grunts a reply, revealing him to be sitting parallel to her, at the desk on her left.

"I've finished."

He waves a hand (not glowing this time), dismissing her, "You can go."

* * *

By the time she walks home, the food's gone cold. She enters the hovel quietly not wanting to startle Maurice. "Papa, I'm home."

"Belle," he says, blandly. She looks over to find him sitting on the bed, eyes distant and far away, but he's calm. She doesn't know if that's the sleep syrup still in his system or a sign that today, he's not with her—but at least he's calm. Belle notes that the plate on the table is filled with crumbs of what were essentially already crumbs. Good, she thinks, he'd been of mind enough to feed himself.

After coaxing a small, smoking fire, she reheats the thick stew and takes a generous serving up into their one bowl. She takes it over to Maurice, kneeling before him. She places their one spoon into his hand. He grasps it, but his idle limb won't move it from bowl to mouth. Belle sighs, "You aren't making this very easy, you know." She says it, knowing he'll never register the slight—all the same, she feels a twinge of guilt for the lapse in patience.

Though the lapses are slowing moving from temporary to permanent states of being, whereas the patience is shifting into lapses.

The inventor's daughter feeds him, sad and slow. After he's finished, she wipes his mouth with a clean spot on her apron and tucks him back into the straw bed. That finished, she takes her own supper, washes the bowl, spoon, cast iron cooking pot, her apron, and last her own dirty hands and face in the stream out back. After, Belle curls up by the fire, and consciously between bed and door, and lets exhaustion take her into a thankfully, dreamless sleep.

* * *

The next day, starts with significantly less theatricality. Rumpelstiltskin lets her go about her business, hardly noting her presence.

After slopping the pigs, she sets about gathering up the copious amounts of laundry to be washed. The task consumes the rest of the morning. She's only just finished hanging the last of it (having beaten the stains out with stones in the cold river—still cold from winter snow, high up in the mountains) along lines between trees on the right side of the house, to catch the best of the afternoon sunlight. Belle shakes her head at the father, who clearly has no idea how to properly clean clothing. Though to his credit, those with only one set don't have much occasion to worry over the proper laundering of clothes.

When Belle completes the task, she takes a moment to catch her breath, putting her hands on the small of her back, stretching. One would think, after all this time, she'd be use to sleeping on the ground. Shaking her head, she allows herself a sigh, turning—only barely stopping herself from knocking right into Rumpelstiltskin.

They both back away instantly, her employer looking embarrassed. It would be funny enough to laugh over, _the Dark One embarrassed_, if Belle didn't think it might be the last time she'd have a laugh over anything.

"Sorry," she apologizes, though the near run-in had been no fault of hers. "Didn't see you there."

"No matter," he says, raising a hand, as if he hardly recognizes the scaly limb.

"Did you require something?" she asks, though it's not the question she wants answered—one cannot simply _ask _why the scourge of the lands was caught spying.

The words shake him from his embarrassment. He looks appraisingly at the lines of freshly hung clothing. "You work hard."

"You were expecting a maid who skirted work?" her voice teases the line between question and sarcasm. She hopes he doesn't take note.

He does, if his glare is anything by which to judge. "One who skirts when my head is turned, yes."

"Well, you needn't worry. I'm not one to generally _skirt_." It's not entirely true, but that was _one_ time. Belle hardly thinks it needs mentioning.

He looks displeased with her forwardness and halfway to telling her so, when something else catches his eye. He leans forward, taking hold of the edge of her apron—it's still wet from the previous night's washing. "Speaking of skirts, you were honest when you said you'd nothing else to wear."

"I don't generally lie, either."

"Paint yourself quite the pious maunt, do you?"

"I'm no saint," Belle spits before she can hold back. "Sir," she adds belatedly.

His jaw clenches, but he makes no reprimand. "Well, then you'll find it no trouble at all to deign to get our lunch together. Quickly. It's nigh on noon hour, and my son's hungry."

Just your son, Belle wonders, but doesn't ask, for she's pushed her luck enough for one morning.

Or afternoon, apparently.

* * *

Quickly enough, Belle throws together a lunch of salted pork slices, goat's cheese, and rye bread—it's basic, but it's what the master'd had in the larder. She can't be blamed for lack of supplies. After she finishes, she leaves them to their meal, getting to work cleaning windowpanes, but staying close enough if they need something, learning last night that Rumpelstiltskin does not like it when she hovers about.

Of course, being that near, she can't help it if she listens in to their conversation.

"Callum showed me a new way to tree climb, even on trees without low branches, Papa," young Baelfire chatters.

"Oh really. Dragged a ladder form home? That's the thatcher's son, isn't it?"

"Aye, but that's not how. He was a scout during the war. It was his job to spot the ogres far off."

Rumpelstiltskin scoffs. "Easy task; they're hard to miss."

Baelfire laughs, as only a boy unknown to the battlefield can. Belle wills her hands to keep scrubbing, though she'd like to stop and listen better—or better yet to run, to _skirt_.

"Well, how'd you go about it then?"

"We wrapped large bands of cloth, large as we used to make—you know the ones, before we'd cut them for the tailor—around the tree trunks and pulling them tight, pull ourselves up." Belle can positively hear the grin in the boy's voice, and it is a brilliant idea. It's one she remembers second hand, having watched many a-time, the war scouts shimmying up trees for better views.

"You're sure this Callum's way is safe?" the father asks, a sharp edge to his voice.

Baelfire is nonplussed, "Of course, Papa."

"Well, alright. Just be careful, son."

* * *

After they finish, Baelfire races back out to rejoin his friends. Belle collects up the dishes and decides now is the best time to pose her question, "You know, I could manage better—"

"I'm not going to pay you more. Deal's a deal."

"I wasn't going to ask that."

He looks genuinely surprised at her reply. He covers surprise with irritation. "Well then, what _do_ you want, dearie?" he says, but there's nothing _dear_ about the moniker.

"I could manage the meals better, if you let me go to market for you. Choose what ingredients fill the larder?"

Her employer leans back to survey her, as she wipes down the table. "Let me get this right, you want me to give you free reign over the purse strings—how do I know you won't be skimming off the top, hm?"

A short front hair chooses that moment to come loose from her headscarf. She straightens, pushing it back with an aggravated hand, for she's tired and sore and just found out she works for a complete ass—a nosy one, at that. "You don't, sir. You'd just have to trust me." With that, she makes a terse curtsey, bobbing about as fast as the blink of an eye, and turns on her heel to take the dirty dishes out to be washed.

Rumpelstiltskin does not stop her.

* * *

Belle fills the next few hours with starting in on the garden patch she'd found by the animal pens. It's a godsbedamned mess of weeds and dead patches, but must have, at one time been of some use, for she can still see traces of care—though long since forgotten. Using a rake she'd found leaning against the larder, covered in cobwebs, but not completely petrified nor cast into the ground, she manages to tear out the overgrowth of unwanted plants. She carves up the ground, into little crisscrossing lines, to allow the air down into the soil. Tomorrow, she'd drag up good soil from the river's edge, as her mother had bade her do when first starting a new garden patch.

After washing her hands, arms and knees of her skirt (face as well, for she'd gotten dirt there when she'd wiped the sweat off her brow), she goes to collect the laundry, for surely it'd be dry by now. Belle takes down the first miniature tunic, folding it up tight, with the back to the inside, so as to keep the front pressed and without wrinkles. As she goes to lay it in the laundry basket, she sees that it is not empty. At the bottom, she finds another set of clothing, identical to what she wears and a purse (though very small) full of coin.

* * *

They fall into a simple routine. Belle wakes, works, returns home to feed her father, sleeps, and then does it all again.

Slowly, her father takes to waking in the very early hours, strangely lucid more often than not, and she begins to do so as well, to keep him company on days he's of a need and to keep watch all the rest. She wonders darkly how long this stretch of lucidity will last.

She also wonders how long she can keep going on so little sleep. Though this is an answer she already knows; Belle will go as long as she must. She's exhausted, but it's what has to be done until she can figure out a better solution.

* * *

It's market day, and Belle is out and about, restocking the pantry, as well as picking up a few seeds and preserved bulbs to add to her little garden. She'd also like to have a talk with the local apothecary, if there's time.

She's just finished haggling over rutabagas with Hoolihan. He's not her favorite villager, but he's the best vegetables, and one of the few who will still make small talk with the infamous _Maid to the Dark One_. So Belle stomachs his arrogance for the scraps of idle chatter he throws her way. Looks like rain, again, she learns.

Fascinating, truly.

Just when she's finally gotten him to agree to her price, she sees him frown at something behind her shoulder. "What?"

"See for yourself," he mutters, scurrying out of sight, into his house—taking the rutabagas with him.

Belle grumbles to herself, but turns around to see what all the fuss it about, if it was worth the pointless haggling. There's a crowd gathered up the street. Belle walks over to see find the cause to the commotion—probably an impromptu cockfight, or a laugh being had at the expense of the town drunkard. Either way, it was surely the most culturally stimulating event she was like to encounter. Oughtn't miss it, if she wanted to have something to discuss with Hoolihan, whenever he decided to come out of hiding that is. What she finds is neither village play-violence, nor the mocking of an invalid.

It's her employer.

Rumpelstiltskin is confronting someone. Belle presses closer into the distant circle, but she can't hear what's being said. Two steps behind his father, Baelfire stands, looking afraid and uncomfortable. The backdrop for the little tiff is the smithy, and she finally places where she's seen the man the Dark One confronts. Doesn't know the man's name, but he's about her age, son of the blacksmith. Second, she thinks, but can't be sure. She does know he's testy, the type to pick a fight in a tavern.

Wrong fight, Belle thinks.

The voices rise higher. She catches _thief, son_, and _hand_. However, the fight is over before it begins; the smithsson raises his hammer, pointing it at Rumpelstiltskin, red in the face, and with a snap of his fingers, the Dark One has magic-ed him into a snail.

Belle's eyes go wide, but she can't honestly say she's surprised. She's known his power to be unmatched.

He leaves the creature where it lays, having parceled out punishment enough. She ducks out of sight as Rumpelstiltskin passes, dragging Baelfire along with him, down the main thoroughfare. The crowd of villagers part like the waters of the deep, from that old tale the castle maunts used to tell the children on Sundays, when she worked there over the summers.

Belle leaves the village quickly, sneaking out into the woods before the crowds realize the Dark One's maid is about, but takes her time getting back to the house of her employer. Halfway there, she realizes she's forgotten all about the rutabagas.

* * *

Belle doesn't exactly struggle with the decision, but that isn't to say she enjoys the execution thereof. She's about to leave for the night, having cleaned up supper and stoked up the fire one last time. She stands in the archway in the center of the house, close enough to be heard, but far enough away to breath. "Are you going to change him back?"

"Hadn't planned on it." Rumpelstiltskin sits at his desk, writing in a large ledger—she's still yet to investigate his small collection of books. "Send him some salt. Maybe that'll cure what ails him."

She chooses her next words carefully, because to push would be to test his mercies—which today she's seen in action, and they aren't extensive. "What did he do to merit such harsh-handed justice?" she asks, even and slow.

"The bastard accused my son of stealing. Was about to take the supposed price from his flesh."

It is true, she knew the family at the smithy to be harsh. The son in question, in particular, always wore a bit of a cruel look. "That seems a bit _extreme_."

He scoffs, "I don't know from where you come, but there's little mercy to be found in this land, mum. Here, it's _in for a penny, in for a pound_, as they say." He sets down his quill back in the inkwell. "From where exactly _did_ you say you hailed?"

"I didn't." She wants to be brave, to say _perhaps if you showed them mercy, they'd learn it by following your example_, but she's afraid and she's learned that to survive, one must oft take the coward's route—that's a lesson she knows very well.

So, she says nothing.

Later, after feeding her father and putting him to bed, she makes her cowardly move. Donning her father's cloak, she makes her way through the woods, the woods she's finally learned to navigate in both light and dark. She stays hidden as long as possible, and then keeps only to the shadows created by the village houses.

Belle reaches the blacksmith's house and sneaking up to the backdoor, knocks quietly.

It's a long time, but finally the door opens a tiny crack. "Yes? What do you want?"

"I'm here—"

"No, no wait. I know you—you work for _him_." The man, presumably the father blacksmith, starts to shut the door.

"No, wait. I've come to help your son," she implores.

He stops, clearly thinking on her words. After a few moments he opens the door, quickly ushering her inside. The man's in his nightdress, and when he begins to light a candle, Belle stops him. "No need. I'll only be a moment."

"You—you can change him?"

"No, but I know someone who might be able to help." She sighs, wishing there was more she could do, but this is all her instinct to survive will allow—so be it. "I traveled, before I came here," she says lamely. "A fortnight's journey, to the south, there's a small city, Padirac. City boasts a witch. She may be able to change your son back. I don't know."

"Padirac, in the south," the man nods, committing the words to memory. "What's the witch's name?"

"Melisande, lives a few miles out the town. Keeps to herself. Her price may be high, I know not, but she was kind enough to offer I and my father food and shelter overnight." Belle shrugs. "Who knows, she may be able to help."

"Melisande, the witch in Padirac," he repeats.

Belle gives a curt nod, turning to leave. As the blacksmith closes the door behind her, "Thank you," he whispers.

* * *

Belle isn't fond of gardening. Never has been; never will be. Perhaps, sleeping on the ground, only to wake up covered in mud aggravated the natural inclination. Who could know? She neither had the time, nor the energies to ponder such eternal questions these days.

She's finally managed to coax a little life into the ground. She's started with a few basics, gillyflower, basil, coriander, and rosemary—though the coriander looks limp on its best days.

She's also indulged and dug up a few of the day lilies from the crossroads where she waits on Eoghain and his egg cart every day or so. The orange flowers looked so lovely by the road, and what's more they didn't get enough sun there to do more than open at an hour before noon and shrivel at two after.

She takes a break, sitting back on her haunches.

"Watch out!"

Turning with soldier's reflexes, Belle catches the pig's bladder ball aimed straight at her head. As Baelfire runs up, she wonders at the boy. He is not a loner by choice or by nature, like his father, but more and more she sees him keeping to the house these days. "Lose something?" she asks, teasingly.

"Sorry, Belle." He shrugs, "Hard to keep to one place when I'm just practicing kicking on my own."

He's not asking for pity, or pandering for a playmate, but Belle knows instantly that he'd rather not be playing by himself. She tosses him the ball with a sure hand. "In any case, young sir, looks to me like you've a strong one."

Baelfire beams at her. Oh, no, she thinks, one day this one is bound to break more than one village heart. She stands, brushing herself off. "However, bet mine's stronger."

He gives her a strange look, but then takes her meaning. "You're going to have to prove it to me."

"I planned on it, Baelfire," she smirks down at him, wiping her dirty hands on her apron. She raises a finger and taps it on his nose, "And I don't plan on going easy on you, so I expect the same."

"Alright," the boy walks some distance from her, to start this game, "but don't say I didn't warn you." He kicks the ball with a good measure of accuracy, and it's no difficulty for Belle to kick it back to him—though it's been many years since she's last played this child's game—using the inside of her foot, as she recalls.

The dreaded garden will keep one more day, at least.

* * *

"Wait a moment," Rumpelstiltskin bids her, one night as she's about to leave for home. Belle thinks instantly that he's realized she's been stealing the leftovers, but his next words put that thought to ease. "I'm going on a trip, first thing tomorrow."

"Oh," she says. "Will you not be needing me then?"

"Oh no, you don't get off that easily." He stands, from where he'd been sitting at his desk, as he was apt to do in the evenings. "It's a _delicate_ business in need of doing; I'm not taking my son with me."

Belle mulls over what this means for her. She realizes this means she's to look after Baelfire. She realizes this _also_ means she'll be held responsible for Baelfire. Oh seven hells. She wonders if she asked the boy nicely if he'd stay sitting inside without moving for the duration of his father's absence, she imagines not. "What would you have me do, sir?"

"Do?" the Dark One takes a menacing step forward, pointing a finger in her face, "Why I'd have you do what I pay you to do—just keep on doing it, while I'm not here to keep watch over you."

Belle gulps. "Yes, sir."

"Keep him fed and out of trouble, and there'll be no problems. I should return in a few day's time."

She nods, and when he says no more, she turns, but at the door, he stops her again. "Oh, and Belle, if there are _problems_—I'll know it."

Belle leaves, knowing only one thing for certain: she isn't likely to get any sleep tonight.

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin has been gone three days, and the world's yet to end, Baelfire's yet to meet an untimely end, and Belle's still in human form. All in all, she can't complain.

This doesn't mean she's stopped jumping at every creak or sound, wondering if the Dark One's come for her, but at least she knows there's no logical reason to draw him from whatever mysterious business he's awayed to.

She can't even truly complain about how tired she is, for this morning (or night, as the case may be) her father had awakened before her, only to wander out, past her curled, sleeping form, into the forest. When she'd woken herself, it had taken half the pre-dawn to find him.

Belle gave Maurice a little more of the sleep syrup this morning.

She's just glad she found him safe and uninjured, but gladness isn't the same as rest. So anyone would excuse her for, after hanging the laundry out to dry, falling asleep slouched between the roots of one of the trees, on accident, when she'd taken a short break.

However, Rumpelstiltskin isn't just anyone.

Belle rouses slowly, feeling something against her leg. Then, she jumps, cursing under her breath, realizing she'd been sleeping in the backyard of the Dark One.

The Dark One who now stood above her, nudging her leg with his boot. "I don't pay you to sleep."

"Sorry," she offers, drowsily, scrambling to her feet. Truly, she's not that afraid. If he'd meant to punish her, he'd look angrier—for she's seen him angry. Now, he looks mildly annoyed. "Not usually that lax."

He _hmphs_ at her, but doesn't raise a hand, nor censure her further. After a few tense moments, he continues, "I've a task for you, that is, if you can stay awake long enough?"

She nods quickly.

"Good." From behind his back—_or from thin air, _she wonders_—_Rumpelstiltskin pulls a rolled up bundle. He holds it up between them. "I need this laundered, _discreetly_."

What's that supposed to mean? "Discreetly?" she asks.

He sighs, "Let's just say, it's in everyone's best interest, that only you and I know of this task."

"Oh, you don't want Bae to know," she says, the words coming from her sleep-addled mouth before her brain can stop them. He smiles, handing over the bundle of clothes to be cleaned, all sharp and jagged edges. Belle takes it warily, and without asking, starts to unroll it.

"Don't _do _that. Not here—"

Her hands stop, but not before she sees a large blood stain. Her jaw drops. "Seven hells. What happened?" she asks, more accusation than question.

Rumpelstiltskin's hand is at her jaw instantly. "Hold your tongue, or lose it. I don't care which, lass."

When she says no more, he takes back his hand. "That's better," he says and leaves her to her appointed task.

* * *

Blood isn't an easy stain to remove, and it takes her quite some time and energy before the clothes are wearable. It's not quite time for dinner, when she hangs them to dry with the rest of the laundry, Baelfire won't come 'round for some time yet.

Belle takes what clothes are dry inside, hoping to find Rumpelstiltskin there. He doesn't disappoint. He's sitting at the wheel, and she can feel his eyes on her, as she moves about the room, returning linens and clothing to their proper places. She tenses when she hears the wheel stop creaking.

"You've done what I asked?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good thing." The wheel starts to turn again—perhaps it needed oiling, but then how would she know when his attention strayed from the wool?

She puts the last of the laundry away, and walking to the door she makes her move. "Why didn't you want me in the village?" she asks, facing the door, instead of the spinnerman.

"What are you talking about? I've said nothing about the village."

Still, Belle does not turn, "The day I met you, you didn't want me to stay. Why?"

The wheel stops. He takes his time with his answer, finally deciding upon, "There's much to fear in the highborn."

"But I'm not highborn."

"Higher than most, then." She hears him set down the spool—ah, this was becoming serious. "How was I to know you weren't some agent of the duke, sent to conduct a secret census of our children?"

Belle cringes at the mention of the duke and children. She was an agent once, though not by any choice of her own. However, Rumpelstiltskin had nothing to fear from her—she was responsible for dead children enough to damn her soul many times over.

Already damned, depending on how you viewed it—depending on whether or not you believed her dead, as Belle would have most think.

She nods to the shut door at his answer, and opening starts to go coax a fire in the brickwork oven outside for their dinner, but he continues. "Dearie."

Belle turns to him at last. "Aye?"

"Before, what I said." He leans forward, his face almost touching the wheel spokes—it's frightening. "I keep my promises. He's not to know."

"I'm good at keeping quiet," she says without emotion, and it's true, for she kept quiet on the sides of roads and below bridges and crouched in ditches. So quiet, the Southlands forgot she existed. Yes, when she wanted to be, Belle could be dead quiet.

* * *

Note – _cocotte _is the French name for a Dutch Oven

Lifted bits:

Maunt – Gregory Maguire's more mythical name for Nun, from the Wicked Cycle.

Sleep Syrup – Hunger Games

Melisande – name from Cameron Dokey's Golden, a Rapunzel retelling (and one of my all time favorite books).


	3. Baelfire gets the talk

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** Belle and Rumpelstiltskin give Baelfire "the talk"

* * *

The discovery comes out of nowhere.

It's a bright, warm, not-quite-but-almost summer day, and this week's wash went much faster than expected—perhaps after having rid the clothes of all the accumulated stains due to the task being performed by an ill-equipped father and son, things would come cleaner faster from now on. After stringing up the laundry to dry on lines between trees around the back of the house, Belle decides it's high time that Baelfire's loft had an airing-out, what with way the young sir trudged down tiny balls of dust each morning. Now with the better weather, the room could be washed and fully dry by nightfall, before her master returned home. Good thing, that, as he was oft to say.

Rumpelstiltskin had left them alone today, having gone on business to nearby Longbourn. It's his second trip, the second time he has left her with Baelfire, and she's glad that, this time at least, she's not half afraid she'll drop a plate and he'll appear behind her with a glowing, hand raised in violence.

That said, she hasn't forgotten his promise, his _warning_, but as she'd told Rumpelstiltskin, Belle knows when to keep her mouth shut.

She sneezes as she walks back to the house, for the springtime sickness is upon her. It is not at all helped by the fact that she sleeps on a dirt floor every night, where dust cannot ever be truly got rid of. So she does not sing today. She'd let a few notes loose while beating clothes at the edge of the ice cold river, but they had been more like croaks and aggravated her throat worse than they'd soothed her soul. She gave up.

Without the singing, there's little warning to the young sir when she begins to ascend the ladder to Baelfire's loft. A few rungs from the top, she begins to whistle, absent-mindedly, and suddenly she realizes, the young sir is not out in the village playing with friends, as she'd thought.

Belle realizes she's just walked in on something of a _private nature_.

"Oh, _I'm so sorry_," she says on instinct, thinking she's stumbled upon the early stages of a youth's discovery of _self_, but her eyes widen, as the rustling of cloth gives way to a flash of a blonde head flying from mattress to hide behind the curtain of the only attic window—one that bears only a skirt, and a white one that Belle's damn near sure is a petticoat, at that.

_Ah, _Baelfire is hiding a girl in his room.

The young couple wasn't fast enough, and now, the son of her master hosts a half-clothed girl behind his curtain.

It's not the first that Belle's interrupted a couple, mid-amorous holds (once her parents, and once her troop leader and that aide-de-camp, that one time), so it's nothing new. Nonetheless, it certainly never gets any more comfortable for all parties involved.

Belle's eyes go wide, as she stares at the boy, clad only in pants and an open jerkin, neither of which doing anything to cover the _army lean-to _in his breeches. He clasps his hands in front of himself, as he realizes this also. The poor boy could not be more red—as red as those rutabagas she'd made last week. "Uh, Belle, I set my clothes for wash downstairs, like you asked," he offers.

Fair attempt, Bae, she thinks, but Belle's not stupid, and what's more, even if she had missed the girl flying from the bed, she wouldn't have missed the pair of bare feet sticking out from beneath the curtain.

Out of instinct, Belle reverts to a voice she remembers from long ago, locked deep in her subconscious—that of her own mother. "Oh, no, no. None of that, young sir." She gives him a pointedly _parental_ look. "Now, I'm going to turn around for exactly ten seconds, and when I turn back I expect clothing." Belle starts to turn, hands on her hips, adding, "On _both_ of you."

She hears more rustling. When the sounds stop, Belle asks, "Alright?" The children give no reply, but she turns slowly, allowing for any yells to halt. None are given.

She looks up, and there stand two young people, one a soldier, and the other nigh-on, but has certainly known death-a-plenty; Belle suddenly remembers that the girl's name is Morraine.

The girl's taller than Baelfire, must be a bit older. In fact, this act may very well have been her idea. Belle wonders, how much innocence the former soldier has left to lose, for more things are left on the battlefield than limb, and life, and hope—as Belle knows far too well.

"Alright," she begins, feeling suddenly very tired and very out of her element, but she knows a few things for certain, this act would not go over well, without a cleric's first having bound up the young people's wrists in a handfast, nor would the Dark One as an in-law, should the girl come to be _in the family way_, and what's more, no one was getting turned into snails on her watch—at least this week.

She thinks of washing bloody linens and wonders briefly if Rumpelstiltskin would consider this _problematic_ enough to draw him back from his business.

"Let's get a few things straight," she says gently to the sheepish children—_because godsdamnit, they _are_ children_. "First, I'm not mad, so you can stop looking so frightened, if you please. Second, I understand _why_, but you can't. Not in this house, as long as it's my place to decide," she says firmly, but not accusingly.

Now, with the rules in place, time to change the battle strategy to divide and conquer, she thinks. "Bae, the laundry must be dry. My basket's by the door, go and fetch it for me, while I wash and air out your room." The boy nods and goes straight for the stairs. The girl follows hard on his heels, but Belle stops her with a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder, as she makes to pass.

Bae turns, when he realizes Morraine is not following him, looking wide-eyed to Belle for an explanation.

"Morraine and I are going to have a little talk. A girl talk." Though, as Belle says the words, she wonders if it's more a _woman's _talk that they'd be having.

"It's alright, Baelfire," Morraine says, heavily, and Belle holds in a sigh. A woman's talk it is then.

Baelfire nods and leaves them. Belle waits silently until the door shuts and she hears the sound of feet moving through brush, before speaking. She wonders just how to begin, when everything's so upturned that no answers are to be found, or more likely to be lost and lost for ages to come, at that.

"I don't want you to think I think you are in the wrong, Morraine." She tries to fill her voice with the gentle love she imagines a country mother or older sister would hold, the love of someone Morraine may or may not have—Belle knows not, simply that she wishes to be like the voice she wanted to hear all those years ago when she'd had questions about war and sex and even love. "It's just, I want to warn a woman, that after the battles and the ogres, there are things, things that in a village do not sit as well. Things that do not sit as well when death isn't imminent."

"It's not big deal," she says, squirming from foot to foot. "And Bae—he cares about me, and he didn't go to war. He's still so _good_." The girl means something akin to wonderful and kind and special and pure and, by the gods, Belle can remember this, she remembers before blood and loss and _hate _made her forget how to feel so very star-struck by a boy, or even by simply a friend. Gods, those were the days.

Those were the days, and she wants Morraine to have more of them.

"He's _good_, aye. I know." She touches the girl's cheek, "Which is why, we need to think ahead, if this would get him into trouble, because we care about Baelfire. Have you considered this?"

Morraine shrugs.

"His father, the old spinner is spinner no more. He's the Dark One, dear."

"I'm not afraid," she says immediately, eyes flaring.

She made a fine solider, Belle imagines. "That's good, but even if you aren't afraid for yourself, it's important to think of the others involved in this, for that's what _coupling _does." She pauses, to let her words sink in. "Maybe not at first, but _eventually_, it forces you to think about others, whether you want or plan to. What of a child, Morraine? Or your parents? When you lie with a man, you chance making one family out of what was two. Are you ready for that? Is Bae?" She asks her questions slowly, not as accusations, but as breadcrumbs. It's important for the girl to find her own way along this path.

Morraine looks thoughtful, "I just want to be with him. He wants it too." A few tears roll down her cheeks.

Belle cups the girls face, wiping up the tears with her thumbs, "I know, sweetling. I know you do, and I wish coupling was just that simple, but it's not. You may be ready to feel that with someone, with Bae even, but are you ready for the rest of it, the housekeeping and the going to market and the babies?"

"No," she says, crying just a little—_gods, she looks young_.

"Then that means you're not ready for this just yet. Wait a while. I'm not even saying forever. Wait until you're, I don't know, not doing it out of a broken heart, because of the war, but when you're with him because you want to be as close to him as a body can possibly be." Belle pulls a fresh handkerchief from her apron pocket and wipes the child's cheeks before handing it over for Morraine to blow her nose. "It's been difficult since coming home, aye?"

The girl nods, still crying. "You aren't going to tell my parents, are you?"

Belle thinks for a moment. What good would that do? Reinforce for the village couple how not little their baby has become? What war breaks and takes, and forces us to live with? No, the girl was a woman-child and Belle believed her words had done the job as well as it could be done, in times like these. "No, of course not." She pats down the girl's truly, very pretty hair.

"And Bae's papa, will you tell him?"

The maid thinks for a moment on her master. She supposes her hands are more tied on that one. "I think I have to, but trust me, it won't come to ill. I'll see to that," Belle promises, though she hardly likes giving her word, these days.

Morraine nods, and Belle thinks she's right in her guessing, that Rumpelstiltskin won't be angry. She'd interrupted the little couple. She wishes she'd interrupted everything, interrupted before the wars, before the ogres, before the blown off arms and broken legs, before children were playing adult games to forget adult pains, but she only interrupted two babies too young for the making of babies. So that is the problem she would work to help.

"No more tears, m'dear," Belle says, feeling suddenly, the lilt of the once-spinner on her tongue. "Let's go out and meet Bae."

On the porch, as Morraine passes back the handkerchief, she remembers another lesson to share, "Oh, and if you choose to do _this_ before the marriage bed, on a market day, go to see the hedge witch. She'll have some herbs to prevent you from becoming with child. They don't always work, mind, but it's something."

The girl's head tilts, as she absorbs the information. "Thank you."

Belle smiles the least sad smile she can manage, "It's nothing. If you ever have questions, or want to talk, about this, or anything, really, you can come to me, alright?"

Morraine nods, and looks surprised, but not afraid, nor hesitant. Perhaps, she would be able to help at least one woman in arms. As she leaves, she passes Baelfire with the laundry basket. He nods to Morraine and they smile awkwardly at one another. Belle almost regrets her timing, but then brushes the thought away.

He ducks his head as he steps up to the porch. Together they sit down and begin to fold the clothing and linens. It's some time before Baelfire speaks, "Are you angry?"

"I already told you I wasn't, Bae."

This puts him at ease, but then his face falls even farther, "Are you disappointed?"

_Oh, my sweet child_. Belle smiles her hidden field smile, for just a second, "No, of course not, well, not with _you_. Never with you, Baelfire. With life, with war, yes, those things disappoint me." As do fathers too busy with "business" to talk to their sons about just what _exactly_ happens in springtime, how flowers bloom and open oft times too soon—caution was needed, for they could have a frost yet.

"You're going to tell Papa, aren't you?"

"Not with _who_, but yes, I am."

Bae nods, and he doesn't look so young suddenly. "Think he'll be upset?"

Belle rolls her eyes. If I know anything of men and their sons, he'll be oddly pleased, she thinks. "No, I don't think he'll be upset at all."

They finish folding the clothes and stacking them neatly in the basket, but as Belle stands to take the things to their proper places inside, she gives Bae her final thoughts on the matter, "All I've really to say, before your father gets home, is that, if you've need to sneak about to do something that may mean it's not the right idea or at the least, deserves serious thought. This isn't always the case, mind, but very often it is, and last, you're soon to be a man. I need to respect that, young sir. I'll knock before coming upstairs from now on."

* * *

That night, Rumpelstiltskin returns in not a splendid mood, but neither one of malcontent—so his attitude is that of general detached animosity toward the world and his little housekeeper. Not surprisingly, Baelfire complains of a headache and asks to be excused to bed directly after supper.

Belle sighs. She could hardly blame the poor—_embarrassed_—boy. As she cleans up the dinner table, Rumpelstiltskin moves to his desk and begins inspecting his market wares. He's brought back books, mostly, but also a kite for Bae. His maid watches him, as he flips through his new tomes, cross checking against his large ledger, almost as large as the desk itself, though for what, Belle knows not.

As she wipes down the very fine table, at least for this provincial town, she brings up her concern, "Rumpelstiltskin, I need to speak with you."

"Bit busy, dearie. It'll keep 'till morning."

She wants to bark, because she isn't left over brown bread that will do well enough for breakfast morn; she is a person, but of course, the Dark One can't be bothered with bread and mere mortals. However, she bites her tongue, and instead balancing the tray on her hip, walks over to his side of the room and says, "No, I don't think it will.'

She sees him sigh, setting down his quill, his shoulders saying _this had better be good, woman_. She plays her best card fast, with his shoulders set like that, "It's to do with Baelfire."

That grabs his attention. "What's the matter? Is he hurt?"

His concern almost makes her smile, but not quite, "No, no, nothing like that. It's just—have you had t_he talk _with him?"

"Talk? What are you on about? We talk everyday?" he says, dismissively and turns back to his work-ledger.

"Not just any talk—the one about the nature—of a man and a woman—_together_."

Rumpelstiltskin freezes, "Bit young for that don't you think?"

"I do, but what I think doesn't matter, for I caught him today, with a girl, in his room." Belle waits a moment before adding, "They'd not gotten up to anything, but were rather on their way."

"_Oh._" He says. He's silent, and Belle wonders what he's thinking about. After a moment, he turns, asking, "Was she pretty?"

Belle rolls her eyes. _Men_. For supposedly being the great and terrible beast, the Dark One certainly did his best to act like every other man with which she had been acquainted. "Though that's hardly the point, yes, she was pretty, very."

This pleases Rumpelstiltskin. "Of course she was pretty. She was with my Baelfire, after all. That shows some sense."

"_Rumpelstiltskin_," she groans, impatient.

"Watch your tone," he censures. Leaning back, in his chair, he steeples his fingers, thinking. Grandly, he says, "I suppose you're right. I'll talk to him about the way of things." The father turns back to his books, considering the matter ended.

If only it were that simple; if only Belle didn't care so damn much.

"And will you tell him of how to avoid undesired children?" she asks. Truthfully, it is a loaded question, for she doubts he knows of the methods himself, of the hedge witches and apothecaries in back alleys, behind curtains without bells.

He sets his quill down, huffing, "I hadn't planned on it."

"Well, perhaps you should."

"_Madam, _if you're so _informed_ on the topic, why don't you just stay and have this little chat with the two us?" he growls.

Belle shifts her weight with the heavy tray, not looking away from Rumpelstiltskin. "Fine. I will."

She suppresses a smile at his expression. She can see how much he desires to say no, but that would be admitting his bluff. Couldn't have that, could he?

"As you wish."

"What time should I plan on?"

He sighs, thinking for a moment, then turns, finally free to go back to his dusty books, "Tomorrow, after breakfast."

* * *

As Belle cleans up the morning dishes, Rumpelstiltskin sits as if he's worried any movement will cause him to fall over, while Baelfire looks anxious to be on the move, hands jittery.

"Papa, I think I'm going to try the kite for, the wind's strong today," the boy says, standing the minute Belle's taken the plates away.

"Sit down, son. We've _matters _to discuss."

Belle leaves the cleaning for later and instead, takes up the breeches she'd been mending and goes to sit in the rocking chair by the hearth. She sneaks a glance at father and son; both their faces look stricken.

"A talk, papa?" Baelfire looks all of the innocence of a babe's naming day, boasting only a week on the earth.

The maid smirks—fine move, young sir.

"I've heard," Rumpelstiltskin begins, but then amends, "Belle tells me you had a girl in your room yesterday, is that true?

"Aye, sir."

He nods, taking a moment to collect himself before continuing—and Belle wants rather much to laugh, for the Dark One looks about as comfortable as one sitting on pins and needles, but then she remembers how he prefers her silence. "Son, remember when you asked me a few winter's back about the pigs," his voice drops a note lower whether in shame or embarrassment, Belle knows not, "we'd kept in the house from the cold and what they were up to, one atop another?"

Baelfire's cheeks go that rutabaga red again. "I remember."

"And you remember what I told you?"

"Yes, papa, that they were bringing about the spring piglets."

"Aye, son. So you know, it's rather much the same with _people_, only not just for in the spring? You take my meaning, Bae?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good. Good thing." Rumpelstiltskin sighs, clearly not sure where to go from here. It's one thing to know the _act_, the other to know why it's best left to pigs and older folk for a few more years. "Do you also remember why, when the piglets are not full-grown, we have to start putting them in two pens?"

_Technically, I do the separating now, _Belle thinks, but doesn't mention this trifling, little detail.

"The boy pen and the girl pen, I remember, because they're too young for _that_."

"Coupling, they still too young for all that." He pauses, but adds, "And like the first, it's still much the same for people,"

Rather sly way to go about arriving at that conclusion, Belle thinks, smiling even as she works to untangle a knot she's created.

Baelfire nods, "So it's because we're too young? Too _small_?"

The adults pause and exchange a glance, for how to explain that though yes, their little children's bodies were too young, too little for this, that was hardly the end of the reasons _why_. Belle opens her mouth to answer, but Rumpelstiltskin cuts her off before she can begin, "That's not the only reason, Bae. Think of it this way. You told me last week about that friend of yours who'd wanted a pet."

"Aye, Lachlann. What's that to do with this?"

"Well, think back to how you told me you thought it wasn't a good idea. What reasons did you tell me?"

"Because he thought the dog would be fun, but he's not good at doing his chores, and I don't think Lachlann was thinking about how he'd have to feed and take care of his pet." Suddenly Baelfire's eyes widen. "_Oh_."

"Take my meaning?"

"It's the same with people, with _babies_."

Belle looks over to see the smirking Rumpelstiltskin—yes, quite sly indeed.

"Aye, son, and it's my reckoning that you're a bit young to be a father, don't you think, Bae?"

"Yes, I'm too young—couldn't take care of it, not yet." He pauses thoughtful, smiling, says, "And you're too young to be a grandfather, aye?"

Rumpelstiltskin looks for all the world like he very much wants to deny this, but then, instead he answers, "Yes, son, too young to be a grandfather yet. Someday, not now though."

"The hedge witch," Belle offers quiet and seamlessly.

Bae's look of comfort and understanding vanishes instantly, as he looks from Belle to his father. "What about Old Agnes? It won't make me sick, will it? Because Lachlann said his ma told him that," the boy drops his voice, low as it will go, but Belle still hears all the same, "if he takes himself in hand, it'll make him blind. Is that true?"

Rumpelstiltskin scoffs. "We had that wives' tale in my day too—it's a lie, son. Told to keep boy's hands out their breeches. But no, it won't make you sick," he comforts. "Only, you may want to go see Witch Agnes, when—if—"

"If in a few years, when you've grown up a bit, the hedge witch can tell you some ways to avoid children," Belle fills in, where her employer had faltered. "Even if you lie with a woman. It's important to know, because perhaps you've handfasted and married and have a family, but who knows, maybe there are too many children, and you need to know ways to deal with that."

"And Agnes, she'll know? Ways to do that?" he asks.

"The hedge witch, or any apothecary really," Belle says.

"I think I'd like to know that. In a few years."

Rumpelstiltskin nods, "Aye, so do we have a deal, then? You'll wait a few years, 'till you've grown a bit more, hm?"

"Aye, papa."

"Aright then," the father looks to Belle, who shakes her head, with no more to add, before telling his son with a crooked grin, "Now, off you go. Catch the wind while it's still strong."

Baelfire doesn't need to be told twice. The boy grabs his kite and a spool of woolen thread, before running out the door. Once gone, Rumpelstiltskin stands and goes to the window to watch his son.

"That went well… don't you think?" he asks uncertainly, and Belle knows what he's really asking: _did I do all right?_

Belle thinks he could have mentioned something about gentleness and being careful with maidens, but then there's time, and all that had been needed today was a warning, a tempering to youth awakening too soon, on the cusp of adulthood, and they'd certainly more than accomplished that. "Aye, it did."

They are silent for sometime, before Belle speaks up. "There, finished," she says, tying the final knot in her thread. She holds up the pair of mended breeches, in the morning light from the window, checking over her work.

When her master's shadow falls across them, she passes the garment up for him to inspect—he was a spinner once upon a time, after all.

He _hms_, running a thumb over the sewn area, then _tsks_, lightly. "Watch your blind stitch; you grow lazy toward the end."

Belle nods; she already knew that, but had hoped he wouldn't care. Oh well, one could only hope for so much. She reaches up, making to take back the breeches, to redo the indolent stitches, but Rumpelstiltskin does not give them back. "These'll do, dearie. Just beware on the next."

"Yes, sir."


	4. Bouncing rosy red rutabagas

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** bouncing rosy red rutabagas, everywhere

* * *

As usual, it's still dark out when Belle awakens on the ground. She rouses to the sound of curses from the Southlands, ones she's only heard from her own mouth of late.

"_Foutre_."

"Morning to you as well."

"Oh, Belle, damn." Her father stumbles over his words, "I had not meant to wake you." The inventor sits beside the small and dirty hearth in one of the two chairs their hovel boasts, struggling to light the fire.

"'Tis alright." She sits up, rubbing her eyes, but even through her hazy wakefulness, she can sense that Maurice is as near to the father she knew all her life as he ever is these days. She's not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed. Both she supposes. "You could have woken me for that," she says, pointing to the flint held awkwardly in a single hand.

He frowns at her, "You don't sleep enough as it is with me bothering you for simple fire lighting, Belles." All his self-loathing hollows his face, hollow as his right sleeve, hanging limply at his side, though Belle can't see it from where she sleeps on the ground. She'd brought them here to recover, to rally before a march to something better, farther off, but they've been here too long and all the demons have caught up—ones that may have never been that far behind to start. The village and the sleep syrup and all the rest (including his daughter's harsh handed, scowling love) are taking their toll on Maurice. An inventor's hands ought never be idle and they certainly oughtn't be invalid.

But at least he's clean and clothed and well-fed. She'd purchased him new clothing and boots (better for their eventual leaving) on market day from her own purse when done with Rumpelstiltskin's shopping. She's filled their hovel with better food and another bowl; she thinks next week she'll get them their own small, cast-iron pot, and because this is how Belle solves their problems with practical answers for questions of the heart and soul, it leaves her little time for sleep and even less for self-pity. She grabs the flint out his hand sharply (and what's more the baby name put a crinkle in her brow). "I'll do it."

Maurice watches her struggle with the damp bits, when fire finally takes, it illuminates the dark circles beneath her eyes. "You're working too hard."

"I'm fine," she says, because that's the answer she's given him for years, why stop now?

He sighs, choosing a different battle to fight, for he's only who knows how much time and so many fronts to cover. "I don't like who you're working for."

Belle scoffs, "You and the rest of the village."

"I'm serious, Belles."

There with that damned milk-name again; she wants to scream at him, she's twenty-four and a killer, certainly too old to be called by her milk-name, but she refrains. Belle knows the quickest way out of this confrontation is to not have it, to hide from it—the coward's way. Trick him with a mask of soothing bravado and he'll be comforted enough to quit. She forces her face to thaw, her jaw to ease—to play the role of she knows he needs. "Papa, it's not so bad."

"_Belle_," the inventor implores, his tone making her look at him. "You can tell me." He reaches his awkward hand that once built clanking machines the likes of which only seen through magic to her shoulder. It's almost too far for him to reach from his chair, and Belle can't quite stand to have him touch her when he's like this—all knowing and _fatherly_, like his concern matters when there's no power behind it. She can't stand it for too long-it'll break her, and she'll suddenly find herself acting _daughterly_.

_(Daughters are weak. Daughters forget things inventor's sons would have never, forget the commanders ordered the adding of brimstone to the water, forget to tell their fathers, forget to be the one to carry the water jars, forget to stay and burry all that remained)._

She feels that burning hate flare, that stems from having to act the parent, the adult, which would be fine, if only he didn't ask her to then play the child from time to time. She can do one or the other, but Belle can't do both and keep her sanity intact, and at least one of them must.

She closes her eyes, and breaths slowly in and out. "It's only for a little while," her voice is gentle, lulling, the voice she finds herself using with Baelfire. "Until you're a bit stronger, 'till I save a bit more. Then we'll leave again. Things'll be better."

He is silent, and she wonders if he sees right through her and her mockery of his heartfelt offer of solace, but after a moment, Maurice nods. Then he says the worst possible thing of all, "I'm sorry, Belle. I'm so very sorry."

Belle doesn't look away from the fire. Belle doesn't say it's fine.

It is an inauspicious start to the day, to say the least, and it tries her patience all before the crack of dawn.

They don't speak for the rest of the morning, though they break bread together for a small meal. Afterward, Belle measures out a spoonful of sleep syrup for him.

The medicine is running out. The gotten gains from Melisande of Padirac, who gave it to her for nothing, shockingly. It is a kindness that still confuses Belle, but she certainly isn't one to turn down charity—these days, she reserves her pride for situations where her father's welfare is not to be benefited therefrom. Belle reminds herself to see what the local hedge witch stocks come market day.

"I don't like that stuff."

Belle sighs, frowning at the minimal amount left in the glass bottle. "I can't leave you by yourself. You know—"

"I know. I know, Belles." He drinks the water, grimacing, but without further argument. Afterwards, she goes to work, and her father to a counterfeit slumber.

* * *

With such an inauspicious start, she should have seen it coming. Perhaps she did, but a few minutes too late, as she knows is the curse she wears like a donned cloak—always nipping at the heels of an event, flapping in the wind, but never quite catching it.

It had all started days ago, when Baelfire had asked her where she'd put the salt in the larder one afternoon. "What need of you with salt?" She'd been dusting the floorboards on all fours.

The boy looks surprised, "For teeth cleaning of course. My jar ran out," he holds up a little clay pot and rag she assumes is also a tool for the task.

"Oh, absolutely not. You're not teasing me are you?" When the boy shakes his head, her eyes go wide, but really this should not shock her—she has removed herself and her father to the backwoods of all the lands, so to speak. Of course, they'd not the more modern ways in these parts. Sitting upright, the joke slips out before she can stop it, along with the unintentional patronizing, for even at their poorest, which is largely now, Belle and Maurice have kept to their regimen of chewing sticks with mint and bay leaves. "Certainly not in Avonlea anymore, are we?"

Baelfire looks confused, "What?"

Belle catches herself and the slip of the tongue. "It's nothing—just something my mother used to say." The boy's expression doesn't change. "It's just to say that things are very different from where one used to be."

"If you don't clean your teeth with salt, how do you do it?"

"Yes, how do you do it, high-born?"

Her irritating employer stands in the doorway, returning at an inopportune time, as is his way. She'd very much like to correct him—for she's _not_ high-born—but she refrains. "With a twig and herbs. It's a better way to go about it, better for the teeth." At least a more _fragrant _method.

"Yes, and do you also bring a better way to dress in the morn, or do men still put on their trousers one leg at a time in your land too?"

She bristles, but leaves the quip untouched. However, she does not drop the issue, because she's one of the few people over twenty in the village to still have all their teeth in their head. "Do you want him to get mouth-rot and need the barber to pull a few before he's full grown like everyone else here, or will you try my way?"

He frowns, and Belle tries to think back, yes, perhaps she can remember the spinner with gaps in his teeth. "Fine."

She gathers up the supplies the next day and institutes the change. Two chewing sticks, with sharpened ends for picking between the teeth and particularly stuck bits, as well as a bag of mint leaves for each of the men in her care—she'd have to add that to the garden, they needn't be running to Old Agnes every time they required more herbs. Every once in a while, she plans to boil up a batch of rinse, with charcoal and apple blossoms, along with the herbs, for the polishing. Every month or so would suffice.

Baelfire takes to the practice fast enough. The same cannot be said for Rumpelstiltskin.

The morning her father plays at fire-starting and parenting, the Dark One is being particularly reticent, the disposition catching. She peels rutabagas, their skins flying away like bright rose petals. Belle plans to mash them into _neeps_—the preparation local to this place, she's learned—for that night's supper, she catches site of the boy scrubbing at his teeth in the reflection of the glass-front medicine cabinet. "Don't forget to scrub your tongue, Bae."

The boy pauses, "Why?"

"For smell."

"Papa doesn't." It's one his most common of answer, Belle's discovering. She can't hold in the choked snort. It's laughable, after all, taking dental advice from one who had yellow, pitted teeth.

"Something funny about the hearth, girl?" Her employer calls from across the room.

"No, sir," she says, then she adds, because she's always had a problem holding her tongue, "You're right Baelfire, your papa doesn't use his stick, but perhaps, young sir, you may do well to remember that your father has the teeth he has for that very reason."

She doesn't have to look up to know that Rumpelstiltskin stares at her, "I have the teeth I do, dearie, because I'm the Dark One."

"Well, begging your pardon, sir, but even the Dark One should brush—you'll certainly be less formidable to the ogres if you have to gum your food."

Baelfire chuckles; the Dark One seethes.

* * *

She's gone too far, he thinks, watching her, sitting smug and confident on his stool, peeling his rutabagas. No, no, this wouldn't do at all. It's clear to Rumpelstiltskin that he's had too loose a hand, and now must remind her of her place.

One which depends upon his good humor. The good humor, he's learning she enjoys trampling all over.

He bides his time, spinning idly, as he waits for his son to leave for the day. He watches as she gathers up their breakfast dishes and stops his son at the door with more of her ordering about. "Cold today, wear your cloak, Baelfire." He watches as she fastens the collar clasp—silver, not cheap—with a smile and sure hands around his son's neck. He watches as she waves him goodbye and goes back to the vegetables, starting to hum to herself, thinking him preoccupied with his wheel or his books.

Appearing before her, he grabs her under the arm, and pushes her against the wall. The maid calls out, startled, the movement upsetting both stool and bucket. He hears red rutabagas roll about on the floor. Pointing a mottled finger in her face, he says, "You think yourself quite the wit, don't you?"

After the initial start wears off, she doesn't look surprised, nor does she answer his question. Instead, Belle says, "I made you lose face in front of Bae. Didn't much like that, did you?"

Rumpelstiltskin's grip tightens. "Allow me to tell you something _you'd_ do well to remember, madam: do not censure me in front of my son, you are neither mistress nor mother in this house. You're servant here. You're here to do as I say, no more, no less. Do you understand the rules?" He gives her a final shake to reinforce the point and steps away quickly, she stumbles at the loss, but manages to nod. "Good. Remember it."

After he says nothing further, Belle bends and begins to pick bruised rutabagas off their grand-for-this-place, wooden floor, but when Rumpelstiltskin walks away, she sits back on her heels, and though she was terrified at first, now she's livid. He expects her to act the coward for him, but she's known dangers just as great and near as the mighty Rumpelstiltskin. "Wait," she calls.

Because she's one who knows how to cut and stitch, clean and cauterize, and all while on the run. Because she knows hunger and sorrow, and before that, she'd glimpsed a land of promise, like the maunts had said, before it had been blown to smithereens.

Because the world keeps asking for more, more, more forgetting that after it every time it takes, takes, takes there's a little less, less, less for Belle to divvy up the next time 'round. Because it's been a hell of a morning, but that's nothing when the world's always been just hell in some bastard god's sodding hand backset.

"I'm afraid of you, alright?" she says. "You frighten me, so you don't have to try so damn hard to reinforce the point." He turns back, entirely shocked at the outburst. "I'm scared of you, but if you think I'm going to go about my business cowering every time you pass me by, then you're sorely mistaken," Belle says, because today's as good a day to die as any, and suddenly, staring up, lecturing the Dark One from his wood floor, holding two rutabagas, death by snail doesn't seem such a bad way to go.

Suddenly the hilarity of the situation hits her; Belle starts to laugh. It starts soft at first but she can't stop, and it grows. She laughs so hard her hands shake, dropping the tubers to roll lopsided.

Rumpelstiltskin walks over, taking up one of the stray vegetables. His anger has drained away at her odd and disturbing fit of laughter. He stares down at the insane woman he's hired to be his maid, at length, asking "Are you ill?"

Belle tries to calm herself enough to answer. "Probably," she manages, but the end comes out more like a moan, and she puts a hand to her head, which she realizes is pounding.

From the laughter, from the world.

Dropping the vegetable into the bucket, he takes her hands and guides her to stand. Rumpelstiltskin leads her to the set of chairs near his spinning wheel. He seats himself in the other, so he can examine her face. Belle hears herself sigh, for there is some comfort in it to be touched in utility, without need or want for any response—so unlike her father's hand on her shoulder this morning. She closes her eyes to it. She doesn't realize her eyes have teared until she feels him wiping them away.

She blinks her eyes open to see Rumpelstiltskin looking surprisingly troubled. "You're overwrought," he says finally.

The look of concern wakes her up. "I'm fine," she says, pulling back and wiping the tears away with her own two hands harshly. Gods, perhaps she is ill after all.

"I have a tendency of making women cry." He says quietly, without looking at her.

"It's not you, well, not _all_ you."

He doesn't say anything, but nods, absently. He stands and walks over to the cabinet, pulling out a bottle. She hears him uncork it and a medicinal scent fills the air. Taking his morning mug, he tosses what's left of the ale from breakfast out the window without ceremony. She watches as he pours a little from the bottle into the cup. He then adds a few tea leaves and ladles out some steaming water from the cauldron on the hearth. He returns and hands her the cup.

"What is it?"

"Tonic. For the nerves."

She'd never been one to understand healing. She'd done well enough in her Latin, and her mother'd said it was no different from helping with the chemicals and oils in her father's shed, but in truth it was so different, and the body was an individual thing, where machines were much less touchy.

Trusting Rumpelstiltskin, she drinks from his mug and wonders at his lack of aversion to sharing his own cup with her. After a few moments she feels a calm come over her but also a focusing of the mind. The headache eases considerably, retreating to the base of her skull. She sighs, setting the mug on the small side table, "Thank you."

Still standing, he examines her face again, and for one bent on convincing her of his deadly capabilities, he touches her so freely, that she can't help but wonder at it. Perhaps he is this free with everything he considers under his authority. "Belle." He says the name like he's weighing a sack of finely-sifted flour for purchase. "You don't look well, but neither do you look ill."

She laughs, and the sound dislodges his hand. "Oh, I'm sure I look ill."

He frowns. "You are physically incapable of keeping your mouth shut, aren't you?"

"Aye, or so I've been told."

"Others agree?"

"Oh many. Though I tried once."

"Aye, and how long did that last?"

"A day, I think. Maybe two."

Despite himself, despite how much he truly wants to pummel her like an unruly piglet, he laughs—it's a condescending scoff, but it's laughter all the same. He sighs, leaning against the table, thinking the matter over, "Is it really so difficult, what I command?" She tilts her head listening. "I'll not argue the matter, remember your place, or lose it. I'm not to be a fool in my own house."

Belle nods, "I'll remember."

"See that you do." Rumpelstiltskin offers her the mug again. "Finish it." She obeys; there at least, he thinks, she followed one order. "Collect yourself," he says, straightening. "I'll just, um, check on the sheep." He leaves her alone to compose herself, and when he returns much later, the rutabagas have all been collected and the floor cleaned, as well as his empty mug.

* * *

Morraine visits one afternoon.

She finds Belle pruning and planting in the garden at the side of the house. The patch of earth seems to be getting better, or perhaps the maid just wants it to be so and has stared at it for too long to be impartial. She's thinking over how very much she'd like to transplant a patch of wild roses she's seen in the forest between their houses, if she can only stand a few thorns or get her hands on some ox-hide gloves, when the young love of her master's son walks up. "Belle?" she calls.

The older woman smiles up to her, "Morraine, well met. I'm sorry, but Baelfire isn't here. His father took him on a trip for the afternoon—something to do with the shearing I think it was."

"I know," the young girl says. "I came to help you." She lifts a large burlap sacks she's brought, "Baelfire said you're working on the garden, so I brought you these, from ours at home."

The little soldier girl has brought the start of lavender and garlic, as well as sage. Morraine prefaces the last by saying softly, "Mother says it helps with fits of hysteria." Splendid, this meant the whole town knew of her father's malady. All the same, Belle thanks the young woman.

They work together in silence, digging and planting. Morraine knows her way about a garden as well as Belle, and together they make quick work of the new additions. They both have questions, but Belle does not press conversation, for she remembers those first few weeks, when all she wanted was someone to let her forget, to which her hysterical father was no help. The questions could wait for when they were less pressing and less unsettling to all the war wounds both women shared.

Morraine leaves before the boys return home, promising to call on her again soon. Belle hopes she's in earnest.

* * *

It's not truly turned to the warmth of summer, but winter is well forgotten by the world, and that means it's shearing season, apparently. They hadn't had many sheep in the Southlands, at least in her household, and as the daughter of an inventor, they'd always purchased fabric for her mother to sew herself with her fine, little stitches. This clothe and thread making is all new to her, but sheep shearing, Belle learns, is a very work intensive activity, preoccupying both men of the house for long durations of time between meals. This is why Belle decides sheep shearing is also the perfect time to have a look about the house.

Specifically at the book shelf and Rumpelstiltskin's desk, the contents of which she's wondered after for sometime.

She peaks out the window in the late morning; both men are hard at work. She slowly sweeps her way over to the desk, setting the broomstick near enough that she hopes to grab it, should they decide to return to the house. Taking one last cautionary glance out the window, Belle looks to the desk. Four books are stacked at present. She picks up the first, for it's been so long since she held an actual book. It's a treatise on medicinal sciences and the human body. It's new, and she brings it up to her face to inhale that scent of paper, entirely it's own.

The next three she finds are on basic chemistry, which she recognizes immediately, another on medicine, and the last, a Latin dictionary, that old language she knows so well, the one in which the monks and maunts sing their chants and make their petitions to their god, Only Host.

Below it all, lies Rumpelstilskin's secret ledger. Belle smirks—what could he be keeping inside, that keeps him so busy night after night. She lifts the ridiculously large cover open to find that it looks an awful lot like a student's primer.

He's practicing his reading and writing, Belle realizes.

A hand snaps the book shut. She jumps, Rumpelstiltskin standing flush behind her. "You don't skirt, but you do snoop, which is ten times worse," he growls.

"I wasn't—"

"Don't lie, or what else would you call having your sticky fingers in my things? What were you up to?" he asks.

"I was just curious. I like books." She tries to look at him from over her shoulder, but finds him huffing too heavily for the mere exertion of anger—Rumpelstiltskin's embarrassed, Belle realizes. "There's no shame, in trying to learn to read," she says softly.

He steps back like she's burned him or screamed at him. "Shame? What do you know of that, you who looks down on this whole place, on all of us with your manners and your high speech. You think yourself quite a cut above us, there's no denying."

Belle blushes instantly, for she had not recognized it until that moment, but he's right, and he's read her as easily as she'd read his ledger. She does think herself above this Frontlands village, but in this, she also recognizes she and her master are cut from the same cloth. "'Us'?" she chuckles, "So snails when you choose and one of them the rest of the time. That's useful."

He grumbles, putting a hand to his hand, "Must we have this conversation again?"

Belle turns to the window, leaving him to his indulgent griping—he won't hurt her. He's not angry enough today. She watches Baelfire corral sheep outside. "Can Bae read?

Rumpelstiltskin scoffs, "Why teach sheep for the slaughter to read, or so our village reckoned."

She toys with the corner of the shut ledger, "You know more than most." Then, she offers, more out of a desire to be amongst books and the written word once again, in any capacity, "I could teach you, if you'd like."

He's silent for a moment, but answers with derision, "I don't need your help."

"No, but it would certainly be faster than you practicing on your own every night."

"And in exchange, for I know you don't offer for nothing? What are you looking to get out of this deal?"

Belle thinks, truly she offered out of her love of all things written, but she's not without need (and she's no charitable Melisande). She thinks of the sleep syrup running truly, very low now and her father with his early rousings and empty days in their dirty hovel. "I want a day. To myself."

"A day off," Rumpelstilskin thinks it over, a hand to his chin. "A whole day?"

"Half then." Belle wonders if he'll make her beg; she wonders if she will.

"No," he says, and she goes wide eyed—does she really work for such a slave driver, as to demand her presence the whole of the week?—before adding, "You'll teach my son as well, then you shall have your day."

She smiles, nodding, "Alright." Teaching Baelfire would probably be more enjoyable than the teaching of his father.

"We'll start tonight."

"Yes, tonight."

* * *

The one good that came from Rumpelstiltskin turning the blacksmith's son into snail, now haggling with Hoolihan is much easier. On that at least, Belle cannot complain. What's more he's begun to talk to her again. They've both agreed to a low-end of honest price for potatoes and that the weather turning warmer is most agreeable, when she bids him good evening, starting down the thoroughfare back to Rumpelstiltskin's.

However, a voice stops her. "Aye, mum, just a moment!"

She turns, expecting Hoolihan, but instead sees the blacksmith. He's bending low to the ground, holding up a small coin, "You dropped this, I think."

Belle walks up, well knowing she dropped no coin. What's more the one the father blacksmith holds out to her is like none Rumpelstiltskin gave her, but she didn't survive the ogre war without making herself sharp in discerning a hidden message. "Ah, how silly of me. I thank you, kind sir," she says loud enough for those close by to hear. Leaning in to take the coin, she whispers, "Did it work?"

"Aye. Come by at dark," he says, barely audible, before standing and cordially tipping his head, leaving her.

Belle sighs to herself, walking through the forest, not looking forward to another late night.

* * *

It's very late and entirely dark when she knocks upon the backdoor of the home of the blacksmith. It opens immediately. "Quick, be quick."

She hurries inside, curiosity peaked at the pageant over secrecy. Once locked in—though that would do little good against the Dark One—she looks expectantly to the blacksmith. The father doesn't stand alone, she realizes, his eldest son stands behind him. Perhaps this wasn't such a fine idea, Belle suddenly wonders. "So, it worked? Melisande, she knew of a way?"

The father shakes his head. "She did not, no, but she knew of one who could. The one she knew changed him back."

Belle nods, smiling. "Good. I'm very glad for you." She spares a glance at the scowling elder son. "You do know he should never come back to the village, yes?"

The father nods, "No, he can never come back, but," and he stops, at a loss for words. "I think my son may have brought some mischief upon you."

"Beg your pardon?"

The blacksmith opens his mouth, but the son cuts him off, "Enough of this. I'm too tired for it." He turns to Belle. "Along the road, leaving the city, I met one who looks for you."

Her stomach drops and she is instantly, deeply afraid. "What?"

For just a moment, the son looks remorseful, but his face hardens again. Shrugging he says, "I knew not what to say. Says he asks everyone after a woman matching your description. Said he knew you."

"Anyone could say that."

"Said he was your betrothed."

Belle scoffs, "I've no betrothed." Not exactly a lie, and it troubles her conscience not in the least. "What did you tell him?"

"I knew not your name, but I said perhaps in our village he would find you."

She stamps a foot, "_Merde_."

"He was on the road to two other cities first, farther west and north than here, following after other leads, but then he said he would come this way."

Belle groans, putting a hand to her head.

"There was something strange to him," the son continues, suddenly not even wearing the little guilt of his earlier words. "He would not tell the name of the one he searched after. What _is_ your name, lass?"

The second son wears a look of one ready to start a witch hunt or perhaps a book burning. "Marguerite, but everyone just calls me Margie," Belle lies seamlessly. Then, she subtly threatens, just as seamlessly. "I have to go, never know when the Dark One might call."

The son smirks, "This late? I'm sure."

"_Fallon_," the father reprimands, at his son's impure insinuation. "We owe her Duncan's life." The second son, Fallon, does not seem impressed. His eyes show disdain for what he clearly thinks she offers when the Dark One comes to call.

"Glad for your son," she mutters, unlocking the door on her own and hurrying out, brusquely. She needed to get home; she needed to think and plan.

Half-way home, Belle realizes she didn't ask what the man looked like who asked after her. Though, truly it could be a number of people—perhaps the one they sought wasn't even her. However, she doubts this, since her luck is largely non-existent.

At best, the man spoke truly, and it's her betrothed come to claim her, which would be irksome. At worst, it's an assassin. Then of course there's everything in-between.

She has some time, for two cities will take weeks at least, if not more. She'd just have to save harder, see to better medicine for her father, and then they'd get on the move again. That's the key, as soon as her father takes a turn up, they'll be free to find a better place to hide.

Worst comes to worst, Belle thinks walking through the forest, as a last resort, just maybe, she could appeal to her employer, for she doubts he'd have any sympathy for an assassin out to squeeze the rest of the blood from those that should have been war victims.

A last resort, but perhaps not so unlikely.

Though, the last resort begs the question: would he have any sympathy for her, learning all she's done?

* * *

The reading lessons add a soothing end to her days at Rumpelstiltskin's fine home. After supper, she instructs Baelfire, who is a quick study Belle finds. Rumpelstiltskin has purchased for his son a ledger. It's rather small, at Belle's urging, for she'd cautioned that the boy'd be less likely to trip going up and down his ladder with a book smaller than the tabletop. The master had frowned at her tone, but the father had taken note. Her employer, she discovers prefers to work on his own, during her instruction of his son, but he always sits close enough to listen in—though whether to oversee her efforts or glean further instruction, she knows not.

After finishing his lesson and going upstairs to bed, she teaches Baelfire's father, whose progress is slow, but steady. One night, she asks him, "How did you learn to read in the first?"

He pauses at his large ledger—upon which Belle's now allowed to look. "I was taught a little when I was in the war," he finally says, hesitantly, and then adds with a bitter edge, "when they still thought of us as soldiers and not sacrifices."

He speaks of a time, the cusp of which she knows so well. She taps where he's been writing in Latin, "No, that one's irregular in the past, remember? Change the base form." He crosses out the word and writes it again, proper this time, without her having to spell it out for him. "Aye, much better."

* * *

It's after supper, but not pitch dark outside—summer's coming, Rumpelstiltskin thinks, as he reads, one ear turned to his son and his maid. They sit working at the table. Bae reads aloud, Belle correcting him every so often in his pronounciation. She stands behind, working on food for tomorrow, rolling little white balls from mashed up potatoes and laying them upon a wooden cutting board in neat rows.

So, as usual, he half thinks her quite mad.

Apparently, he's not the only one. Baelfire pauses, looking over the cutting board and in her bowls. "What's this for, Belle?" his voice full of the awe his son holds for the only woman in their life. Rumpelstiltskin too, pauses in his reading.

"They're called _croquettes_."

Ridiculous, they ought to be called, Rumpelstiltskin thinks, after seeing all the effort required in their preparation.

"_Croquettes_," Bae repeats.

"Yes, that's it. They were one of my favorites growing up," she laughs lightly, rolling another little ball between her palms, powdered with flour, "and when I worked at a fine manor house in the summers, the cook used to sneak a few to me. Eventually, he just taught me the recipe, seeing as I liked them so much." He can't see her, but he knows she smiles, hears it in her voice. "Oh, Francis. Francis first cook."

His son as well, smiles in tone, "Where is he now?"

Belle pauses, for just a second before answering, "Oh, still making _croquettes_, I imagine."

"And do you eat them, like this?"

"You could, but that wouldn't be very good at all. I'll fry them tomorrow, that's what the flour's for."

"Then why make them tonight?"

"They have to set up—stick together—overnight. If they don't, then they fall to pieces when you fry them. I think you'll like them very much."

"Aye, sounds good."

Suddenly Belle gasps, "It's later than I thought, time for your father's lesson. We'll have to finish up the passage tomorrow. Off to bed," she shoos the boy.

Once gone, the dishes cleaned, and the _croquettes _layed and covered upon a high shelf, Rumpelstiltskin asks her, "Is it true, what you said?"

He hears her walk up behind him, sighing, "Unless the dead have need of a first cook then no, it wasn't."

"Why did you lie to my son?"

"Oh, I don't know, because I like it better when he smiles, I suppose."

"You do him no favors by coddling him," he says, though he's too oft guilty of the same.

"Aye, and the world does none by breaking him. Oughtn't he have a little more time?"

Rumpelstiltskin pauses at his writing, isn't this more than half the very reason he'd taken the knife and the pledge of the Dark One—the other being for himself, to cover his cowardice, but that's beside the point. "Aye, he ought."

They are silent, both thinking thoughts of war and children.

"You can go."

"Your lesson?"

He returns his quill to the inkwell, "I'm tired. We'll pick it up tomorrow." We've time, he thinks, for at least one night's rest.

* * *

When the young sir mentions that the grove of cherry trees deep in the forest has finally ripened, Belle can't resist. _Croquettes_ weren't the only treat Francis first cook taught her to make, and she hasn't had sweets in sometime. They find a tall ladder in the back of the larder. It's old and missing two rungs, near the bottom, but it will do the job well enough, she thinks.

Together, Baelfire leads her into the woods to this strange grove he's found. "Who planted it?" she asks.

The boy shrugs. "Old Saorla perhaps, it's always been there, long as I've known, but it's too far for most to remember or come to gather." He's certainly right about that, for it takes them most the morning to get to the place, but once they arrive, Belle thinks it worth it, for the cherries look fine as any in her Southlands.

They get to work, Bae at first very determined to be the one to climb the ladder or the trees or both, but Belle puts her foot down. "I'll not have you falling and breaking your neck on me, young sir." She messes up his hair, "I'd miss you too much." She neglects to mention that she wouldn't have to miss him overlong, for his father'd make quick work of her immediately thereafter.

It's decided that Belle will climb up and shake the limbs to dislodge all the ripe cherries. The boy resigns himself to gathering up and sorting the fallen cherries into the baskets they've brought along.

It's easy work, easy enough that Belle finds her thoughts drifting. She thinks over how she needs to get on the move again, but her father shows no signs of improvement. She thinks of the paths she'd take in the woods, should they need to escape in the night. She thinks over which cities to run toward.

She thinks and thinks, and with a shake too many the rung she stands upon breaks, dropping her. Belle calls out, but just as quickly as she fell, she lands in strong arms, the arms of Rumpelstiltskin.

Belle blinks up at him, shocked, an arm about his neck. "Thank you," she offers.

"_Papa_, that was amazing," Baelfire exclaims.

At his son's words, he releases her unceremoniously. Stepping back awkwardly, he says, "No matter."

All three know this means that Rumpelstiltskin has been following them, and though fortuitous as it is, one member of the party isn't exactly pleased to know he's still spying on her. She looks up to see her employer staring. He looks away immediately—at least he's discomfited at being caught, she thinks. However, as Baelfire continues to praise his father on the rescue, Belle finds he's not the only one discomfited, willing away the blush she feels on her cheeks.

* * *

Notes:

- Neeps: Scottish name for mashed rutabagas  
- Salt and rag, as well as the chewing stick method are real teeth cleaning methods from the Middle Ages


	5. Crazy old Maurice

**Summary:** **AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.**

**Unprompted: **Crazy Old Maurice.

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin has a problem on his hands.

A problem worse than mold in a batch of fleeces, worse than a broken wheel axel two miles out of town, worse than the drought two years' past, worse than that time Bae took sick and the fever wouldn't break—well, not worse than the last. _Nothing_ since had been worse than Bae's taking sick, with the exception of Hordor and his men—but Rumpelstiltskin had certainly taken care of _that_, hadn't he?—freeing him to now worry over a problem only slightly less troublesome, a problem of the worst kind.

Rumpelstiltskin has a woman problem.

He stands pensive, staring out the rippled glass window, watching his son play kick ball with their maid. With an exceptionally strong kick, her shoe goes flying. Baelfire retrieves it for her, ever thoughtful. The father watches as his son returns the shoe, making a little bow. He hears Bae offer it up to her, kneeling, "Here, milady." Rumpelstiltskin thinks back to that first day, and how even then, his son knew this bur of a woman was to be addressed as such.

The problem curtsies, a tickled smile playing at her lips. She nods, accepting the shoe, with a dainty hand perched on his son's shoulder, "Why thank you."

Rumpelstiltskin frowns.

It isn't that he doesn't like her. That's not the problem at all. In fact, the list of things he likes about her is growing, quickly. If hard pressed for an answer, he could safely say he likes her cooking, as long as she keeps to local dishes and not that stuff from her homelands (wherever they may be-he'd yet to whittle the answer from her). Too light and airy for his liking. Too much butter. In any case, her cooking's certainly better than his.

He likes that naughty little joy he gets, knowing one born and bred as high as she must answer to his beck and call, launder his clothes, and clean his chamber pot daily. He likes the way her mouth sets firmly in a sloped line that says quite clearly, I'm thinking of some very nasty names to call you, but I won't because you're the reason I'm fed, whenever he reminds her to keep to her proper place.

He likes the way her face flared to bright red when he'd called her dim-witted three days back, over one of ewes getting out the pen, and he likes the way she flushes when he's made her carry something particularly heavy.

He likes the way her left foot lifts off the ground, just a touch, whenever she bends at the waist to pick up something—a spoon, or sock, or some bauble of Bae's—likes that she did it when she'd dusted the ladder rungs, and he, sitting at his desk, could watch her, through the reflection in the window, catching a glimpse of her stockinged calf.

_Aye, she's fine looking enough, but you could have done more with her dressings, for one who was once a spinner._

Rumpelstiltskin, the Dark One, starts at the voice, still unused to the ever-present Zoso. He silently replies, "She's not a crossroad's whore."

_True enough_. Snickering, Zoso provides a mental picture of the town harlot to the old spinnerman.

"I don't do that," he growls. "I don't pay for pleasure."

_You will. _

Belle shrieks, and Rumpelstiltskin's attention snaps to the fore—damn, he'd just thought of her by name, a problem indeed—however, he finds nothing amiss. It's started to rain outside, taking her and Baelfire unawares. However, this has upset neither one. They smile, surprised at the shower, and the maid looks free, freer than he's ever seen her, and as she throws her head back in laughter, he realizes it's the first he's heard her laugh without disdain. Catching Baelfire under the arms, she spins him up off the ground, around in circles.

Rumpelstiltskin's never been one to play with his son—the poor have not time for games, and he considers it late to be learning with Bae nigh on manhood. As he watches them run about in the rain, free and playing together, something dark and hot flares in him; he feels jealous.

_We should just get rid of her and be done with it. _

"No," he thinks.

_Useless fool—how do we know she's not some spy, sent here for the dagger? You know better than most, strangers met upon the road aren't to be trusted_, the last Zoso adds with an ironic chuckle.

"I can't. Bae, he loves her."

Zoso groans. _Always making concessions for your bastard son. You ought save the jealousy for something that's actually yours._

"He's mine," Rumpelstiltskin says, watching Baelfire first climb and then jump from one of the trees in the yard—so fearless.

Zoso scoffs, the demon within knowing there's a foothold to be found in this particular insecurity. _How do you know? Something so brave and bright—how could that come from any part of you? _

The father makes no reply at the well placed jab. The voice retreats back into the depths of the Dark One, having made his blow for the day, leaving Rumpelstiltskin to brood alone. He watches out the window without actually seeing. He doesn't hear the door open, doesn't hear Baelfire come inside.

"Papa, the wool needs to be out of the rain. What do you think, house or larder?"

Rumpelstiltskin shakes his head, looking up, "What?"

"The wool? Can't let it get wet. Where do you want me to put it, inside the house or the larder?" the boy stands at the doorway, drenched from the rain.

"Larder's fine," he says.

Baelfire nods, running off. He brushes past Belle as she slips off her shoes to come inside. Standing at the doorway, she wrings out the edges of her skirt. Not bothering to shut the door, she tip-toes over to the hearth, trying not to drip too terribly. Taking off her headscarf, she says, "Someone's quiet."

Her employer grunts at the statement, but neither turns from the window, nor makes any intelligible reply. Belle walks over to the window, reaching past him, she unlatches it and leans out, wringing the water from her head scarf. "I expected howls at the injustice of wet foot prints on your fine, wood floor."

Her words and the blast of fresh, damp air awaken him, though still in a dour mood. He takes in her face, framed by wet curls, the water making them darker than usual. She's smirking at him—is she teasing him? Surely not, Rumpelstiltskin thinks.

His face reveals his confusion, for hers falls in response. "Something the matter?" she asks, leaning back inside.

He shakes his head, "No, not at all." He frowns hearing a strange pitter-patter. Eyeing her once over, he realizes the sound's water dripping off her skirt. "You're a right mud puddle. Dry yourself by the fire, before you make a mess to be cleaned."

"Ah," the maid says, frowning. "There it is."

"What?"

"The Rumpelstiltskin I know." She walks back over to the fire and bends down on her haunches, stoking it up. She shakes her hair, without care to the water it flings about. Rolling his eyes at the incomprehensible girl, he turns back to the window. He can see Baelfire making fast work of dragging the bushels of wool into the larder.

Apparently, he's not the only one watching. "You've got a good boy there," she says, praise and not a little affection evidenced in her voice.

"Aye. The best boy," he replies quietly. He's silent for a time, watching Baelfire finish with the last basket. The child stands, hands on his hips, taking stock of the work he's done. "Can hardly call him mine," Rumpelstiltskin whispers to himself. To the window. To Zoso. To his lost wife.

Certainly _not_ to the forgotten maid by the fire. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Shite, he'd said that out loud. He turns, unsure how to proceed. Especially when she looks up at him, hair curling more than ever, too many questions in her framed face. She's caught him so off guard, he can hardly help but answer honestly, the confession out his mouth before he regains control, "I—sometimes, I wonder, that is, if he's even mine."

"Don't be ridiculous," she snorts, incredulous. "Of course he's yours." She stands, rewrapping her hair. "He's got your eyes," the maid says without cost or plan, not even bothering to look at her master, like she isn't making a statement of great impact. "Or did, well, you know, _before_." Then, she plucks up one of the baskets of cherries from the grove and takes them out through the open door. She sits on the covered front porch steps and begins to pit them, humming to herself.

Rumpelstiltskin stands, unmoving, staring out the front door. It's the first affirmation of paternity he's ever had, and even delivered in her briny tone, the words have rendered him speechless and dumbstruck.

After a while, Baelfire comes round to the front of the house and takes a seat beside Belle, lending a hand with the pitting.

Yes, Rumpelstiltskin most certainly has a problem on his hands.

* * *

Belle greets the day before the day itself awakes, but this morning, she smiles, stretching on the dirt floor—today she does not work for Rumpelstiltskin, and though she's work to do, she's her own master. She takes breakfast with her father, promises that soon they'll have days where he doesn't have to sleep, though whether he registers her words behind his blank eyes she knows not. At the last moment, before leaving for the village proper, she slips off her headscarf, letting her hair have day of its own as well as she.

The weather turns lovely, one of those spring days that is hot in the sun and chilly in the shade. The walk is calming; she does not sense a hidden presence in the chilly shadows, the barely perceptible change in the air signally the presence of Rumpelstiltskin, to which Belle's grown accustomed to recognizing some of the time—or at the least strongly suspecting.

She is alone at long, long last.

Upon entering the village, she seeks out the hedge witch, Old Agnes first. The old woman's little hovel is as pathetic and in as much need of repair as Belle's own. It's hidden off the main path, past the home of the butcher. The air is thick with the pungent smell of boiling of animal fat and tossed out entrails. The environment has a way of repelling all but the visitor with certain and necessary purpose—perhaps Belle should take a lesson from Agnes.

She comes upon the little hut's entrance, the door open and curtain strung up to the side for the day by a string that ends in little chimes that play flat notes every time the wind blows. With the door open, Belle hears the voices before she can see the occupants.

"That rain ran off with all the Wild Carrots, eh?" Old Agnes' shrill voice calls. The Southlands' girl has only a little difficulty with the woman's thick accent, not to mention the fact that her words are muffled by the ever-present pipe in her mouth.

"Sadly yes—if you've Vervaine, I'd prefer that over the Tansy." The second voice, a woman's, Belle recognizes not.

"You might have to make due with the Mugwort. I'll see what I'ave about."

The other voice sighs, "Fine, but be quick—I'd rather not miss the noon hour." Belle steps in the doorway, and the owner of the impatient voice looks up. "How now, Agnes who's this little bloom upon your threshold?" The woman, older than Belle, but surely not yet forty years, with dark blonde hair, and a dress showing the most bosom she's seen in the village, takes stock of the younger girl.

The hedge witch returns from the back of her little house. Looking up, she says, pipe still clutched in her mouth, in the hole where her right incisor used to reside, "Oh her? That's the stranger. Lunatic's daughter." She adds, with more insinuation than the first, "Works for the old spinner."

The woman's eyes light with recognition. Smirking she says, "Oh, yes, I know you. Rather thought I might see you in my part of town, eh?"

"Here's your Mugwort." Agnes shoves a little bag of dried herbs into the other woman's well-endowed chest. "You know what to do with it. On your way now."

Clicking her tongue at the old woman, the younger smirks and says, "No need to be like that. I buy your stock as well as any." She points past the witch to one of the shelves along the wall. "And that's an awfully big jar for you to be selling to just poor old me and mine." Sniggering to herself, as she walks out past Belle, she turns back. "Who knows, maybe that's what the Dark One's little maid is here for."

Belle enters fully, frowning. "Who was that?"

Old Agnes shakes her head, her gray broom-bristle locks remaining stock still, despite the movement, "That was Carlotta."

"Carlotta?"

"Aye, of hangman's tree crossing." The old woman adds a touch quieter, "the sellslove." Ah, that would explain the copious amount of breast on display, as well as the herbs—though in her lands they called it Bitter Buttons. Changing topic, the witch asks, "The usual pipe stuffings for your spinner?"

_He's not mine_, she wants to correct, but holds her tongue, for she'd a task to be accomplished. "No, actually I need something for my father."

The old hag snorts, smoke coming out the pipe in bulbous puffs. "Oh, girl, I've nothing for madness, and you'll be want to find anyone who has—"

"No, not for that." Belle looks around the shop, for something that might do. The shelves are made from partially hewn logs, cut to a right angle on two sides. The maker's neglected removing the bark from the third, exposed edge. It gives the hut a wild, untamed feel. "I need something to help my father sleep while I'm at work." She passes the witch her almost-empty bottle of Melisande's sleep syrup, eying the hanging bunches of plants, hung without rhyme or reason from the rafters. "Something like this."

Taking the cob pipe from her mouth, she accepts the bottle. Uncorking it, she takes a strong whiff. Agnes coughs, wet and surprised, "Gods girl, sleep or death?" she asks.

"He takes it freely." When he's of a mind. Belle isn't proud, but if there is another answer, it eludes her. She sure as hellfire isn't going to answer to this old hag over the choice, however.

"Aye, and ass'll go through fire with the right blindfold."

Before Belle can bite back that she didn't ask the witch's opinion on the matter, the old woman shakes her head and passes back the bottle. "I've none of whatever this be." She waves a lazy hand around to her shop,

"Not the same, just something like it."

"Haven't got that either. The little I've here does the trick for children, cutting first tooth and the like—won't do nothing for large a man as your da." She turns away from Belle, sitting at a small table sorting dried flowers and roots. "You'd be better off giving him Padair's bottled spirits."

"I'm not getting my father drunk."

The hedge witch raises an eyebrow, "Be little difference to my eyes."

Belle grumbles, turning on her heel to leave. She'd just have to hope the apothecary would have something suitable—more expensive, but it is her only other option,

"Marcas'll tell you no different—better off saving your steps and walking to the tavern."

Belle curses the ancient woman with words that would've made even her father blanch, but says nothing further.

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin finds his day slow and strange. He's all alone, with Baelfire having run out to play with the village boys, and the girl being absent.

At first, he had set out to wash the wool of dirt and thistles, the weather being warm and dry, but that had proven too difficult without his boy present to help, and what's more, he can't find the proper laundry basket. Fool of a maid must've put it someplace ridiculous.

He decides instead to work at his books. Sitting down he copies the verbs which he's currently memorizing, but three pages in, realizes he's mixed up the formal and informal pronouns. What's more for the life of him, he can't recall the difference between past and future conditional. The girl had explained it three different ways—all of which equally amounted to no help whatsoever. Damn girl.

And where is Bae? Bae would remember.

Rumpelstiltskin decides to take a break. Do a little spinning. That would clear his head. At the wheel he hardly need pay attention, his fingers knowing better than he. He finds his rhythm soon enough, and the action is lulling.

So lulling in fact, Rumpelstiltskin begins to hum without realizing it. He hums one of the maid's tunes for a few minutes, until on a particular high note, he catches himself. His hands and mouth halt immediately. Very odd that he should be mimicking one of her little ditties. He glares at one of the baskets of cherries sitting on the side table in front of his wheel. Stupid girl.

That reminds him, the maid broke his ladder. That certainly is a pressing matter. Weather is temperamental this time of year. Rumpelstiltskin looks at the bright sun shining in through the window—that could change. What if rained? That might reveal a hole in the roof he ought patch. Or perhaps, what if Bae threw his ball and it stuck up atop there or the larder. Couldn't have his boy trying to climb up, jump from one of the tree limbs. That'd be just something Bae would try.

Yes, they needed that ladder replaced with all haste.

Well, Rumpelstiltskin would have to see the carpenter and purchase a new one. If he just happens to check on his son along the way, so much the better. That would bring him past Old Saorla's place. Not an all together unpleasant idea—see what the strange thing did with her coveted day. Two birds, one arrow, and all that.

As Rumpelstiltskin dons his cloak, he tries to ignore Zoso's snickering.

* * *

"I've nothing like that here, lass."

The old hag had been right, damn her. "Please, you must have some ideas," she implores. Belle eyes the properly labeled bottles along the shelves—proper wooden slab shelves from the carpenter, not the mangled half hewn hearth logs in the witch's hut. She picks a bottle up, but Marcas, the apothecary, takes it out her hand, setting it back down, "That's for childbirth."

Turning, she follows at his heel like a puppy, as he stocks his shelves. The shop is rather large and finely built. The apothecary did well enough, apparently. "You must know of a way, or at the least where to get something."

The man setting his basket of bottles and jars to be distributed on the counter toward the back of the shop, sighs. He glares at Belle, before rubbing a hand over his eyes. Finally, he says, "You don't have money for the likes of that."

Belle cringes. He speaks the truth, for she hasn't money enough to place some far off and lofty order. She bites her cheek, deliberating. At length, she decides to use her last bit of leverage, the bit she's always wishing the villagers to put out of mind. "You do know for whom I work."

Marcas scoffs, "Aye, I know." Shaking his head, he says, "And I doubt he gives care enough to help his wait-staff, no matter to what ends you _wait _upon him."

Belle frowns at implication. The man notes her scowl and raises his hands in apology. "I mean no offense, mistress, but that line won't pay your tab, and threat of the Dark One alone won't move me to allow you the trespass—"

"_Marcas!_"

"Oh the gods," he groans at the tittering voice in the doorway. Belle turns to see three village girls, pale and pretty youthful things. "Back again? Told you well enough last week: I can't help you, and anything in my shop'll sooner burn your hairs as bronze them, you foolish hens."

"But can't we just try some of this," the girl in front picks up a bottle near the door, and Belle rolls her eyes at their whining, turning away to mull over her own problems. Surely there was some answer—she just hadn't thought of it yet. She thinks over their last remaining possessions of any substantial worth, though hardly much at that. There is her father's smallest tool kit, her necklace and ring, and her mother's book. None would fetch much, but it might be worth a try. Perhaps she'd just have to swallow her pride and ask her employer for the help. The thought alone leaves a foul taste in her mouth.

"Yes, that's all well and good, but I don't know how the festival a village next fills my stores any fuller," the apothecary grunts.

"But _Marcas_," one girl pleads—Belle doesn't try to tell the three apart, as they may as well have shared one face, as similar as they are to each other—pulling on the apothecary's arm. The motion knocks a bottle from a nearby shelf. It falls with a smash, causing the girls to scream in alarm and the shopkeep to shout a curse.

"Now you've done it," he says, staring down at the broken glass. "Out! Out with you." The three run away, clutching one another. "Mighty lucky I don't make you pay," he yells after them.

"What did they want?" Belle asks, not truly caring, more trying to bide her time in the shop.

Bending over, he picks up the largest pieces, using his apron to glove his hand. "Potion to turn their hair lighter. Wool for brains, those three," he bemoans, walking over to the counter to retrieve a broom for the rest of the glass shards. "I could sooner spin straw into gold than turn their heads yellow."

The maid recognizes the local saying—_around here, we say it to mean an impossible task_. Then, she recognizes what the girls had been wanting. "I can do that," Belle says, eyes wide.

Marcas stands, narrowing his eyes at her, skeptical. "I doubt that, stranger."

Belle sees a way out, suddenly—the hope of it yellow as straw or gold. "No really, I can." It's true. One summer when she'd worked in that manor laundry room, the young staff girls, and even a few of the nobler ones, had altogether cooked up potion and dyed their hair in the sun. Belle's hair (for she'd been the only brunette to try the trick) had turned an unfortunate red shade, and gladly faded before she'd returned home after the harvest feast, and that had been the end of that adventure. But she remembered the recipe well enough. "I could make it for you."

Marcas pauses. "Hair potion for a silly gaggle of girls won't pay the cost of your father's sleep draught, as well as the fetching of it."

Belle leans across the counter, imploring, "But it'll help. I can pay the difference."

"You'd pay me coin to make potion?" he asks. When she nods, he stares at her, thinking—actually considering her proposal. Taking a rag he takes his time cleaning the spilt contents of the broken bottle off the shop floor. When finished, he returns to the counter across from Belle. Sighing, he says, "You know, there's a place, not far from Longbourn." He stares at her, and when the confusion on her face does not pass, he continues, "A place for those the likes of he, without their wits." He means an asylum, Belle realizes. "You ought put him away, lass."

"No. I won't do that."

Marcas shrugs, "No matter to me. Just thought you should know." He scratches the back of his head, "Alright. Fine, I'll take your coin and your hair dye." Raising a finger, he adds, "But I need proof. Bring a wee bit, and we'll test it, then go about getting you your sleep draught."

She nods, beginning to list in her head the things she'll need to make the potion. Simple enough recipe, and the apothecary would probably be able to deduce the ingredients for himself soon enough, and then she'd be out of luck once again, but this is a start. She'd need Calendula, Chamomile, Vinegar—preferably from apple cider—Saffron, Marigold, a little bit of sulfur, alum, Walnut (bark and shell) and then of course, the lemons.

A little smile plays at her lips without realizing, as she thinks on her mother's lemon trees. They'd been Verna Lemon trees. Fragile things, the young ones died easily if hit by an early frost, and her mother had taken great pains to keep those she'd transplanted from Avonlea manor alive in their home garden. The Vernas, to the best of Belle's knowledge, could only be found in the Southlands, being too fragile for these northern reaches, but surely the heartier variety found in these parts would suit for hair dye just as well.

"Have ye a name, stranger?"

Belle looks up, startled from her thoughts. "What?"

"Well, if we are to do business together I can't keep calling you 'stranger' now, can I?"

She thinks for a moment, recalling her most recent talk with the blacksmith, and the name is out before she can stop herself. "Verna."

Marcas frowns. "Verna. I'll never remember that. Think I'll keep calling you stranger. That alright by you, stranger?"

She shrugs, "I'll get used to it."

He nods, "Good. Off with you, now. Come back soon as the mix's ready."

"Thank you," she says, meaning it.

He scoffs, shaking his head. "Thanking me for work and cost. You're a strange one, stranger."

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin walks down the main thoroughfare, relishing the manner in which the neighbors clear from his path. He knows almost all by name, at the very least by trade. Few knew his name until this year, but now they know it. They all know his name.

He holds his head high, thinking over the name of each as they pass, when his eyes alight upon just another face in the crowd in a plain brown homespun dress, but it's not just another face, and there's nothing plain about it. _Belle_.

This is a surprise, for he had not expected to see her in town. She had certainly not been a frequenter of the village main _before_. She's without headscarf, hair free for the day—the sight had thrown him momentarily—and there's something of a vague lightness to her stride different from the way she usually stalks about his home. He stares intently after her.

So intently that he does not see the villager in front of him, bending to pick up a dropped basket. He knocks into the poor man, who falls to the ground, rolling a bit.

"Watch where you're going!" The villager stands, brushing himself off, "I've a mind to—" the middle aged man realizes to whom he speaks, and sputtering out an apology runs off from a scowling Rumpelstiltskin. Frowning, the once-spinner scans the crowd, having lost sight of his maid. Finally he spots her, much farther down the way. Rumpelstiltskin wonders how she's spent her day apart from himself and his son, why she'd wanted the day so badly in the first place.

So, to sate his curiosity, he does what he does best: he hides.

Slipping quickly off the worn-down path, he slides into the brisk shadows made from the houses, following her. There's at least one thing to be said for his new coloring, the darkness to him certainly makes hiding easier. He catches up to the girl quickly enough, keeping to the opposite side of the lane as she. He watches her buy lemons (bruised, unripe little things) from one of the local yeomen. Hoolihan's the name, Rumpelstiltskin thinks. She hands over a shockingly low number of coins. Odd, that.

Afterward, she crosses the street and walks, of all places, to the smithy. Rumpelstiltskin smirks, following her to the location, still staying out of view. He narrows his eyes as she slips between the bars of the open air shop, picking up knick-knacks he cannot make out. Off to the side of the smithy, pausing in his metal work, the eldest son of the blacksmith eyes the woman, and when she bends to look through a box of spare bits, even at a distance, Rumpelstiltskin can see that the boy ogles her backside blatantly. The boy does so frowning.

_Does the blacksmith's boy court her? Is that why she'd wanted the day?_

The sight produces a sudden and unwelcome taste in Rumpelstiltskin's mouth. He wonders if he should reinstate a family resemblance between the upstart and his brother. That particular thought puts his mood right.

The girl makes her choice—a lock of some sort he finally deduces—and instead of offering her coin to the unoccupied son, she walks to the blacksmith who works at the fire on the other side of the smithy. The old smith upon her call, sets aside his work to attend her. Rumpelstiltskin watches as the maid offers a handful of coin, and watches still as the blacksmith rebuffs her offer. It takes some convincing, but finally the girl puts her coin back in her purse and takes the lock, thanking the blacksmith many times over. Very odd, that.

Besides, on the whole the smith family looks not _nearly _forlorn enough. Exceptionally odd, that. Though that family was never much on brains, the better to pound away at nigh near unmovable metal—the whole incident gives Rumpelstiltskin pause. Perhaps, he would have to think over the matter at length later that evening.

Perhaps, he'd need to learn more about this one, his maid.

He follows her on her way out of town. On the edge of the woods, she stops to talk with the chicken man, Eoghain. The man of wide-girth says something that Rumpelstiltskin does not catch, and the girl laughs the laugh she generally reserves for his Baelfire. He wonders what moved her to laugh in that way of hers that she usually metes out so sparingly—certainly not for anything he's to say.

He follows her quietly trekking through the woods toward Old Saorla's place, when she halts suddenly. "You going to follow me the whole of the way home, Rumpelstiltskin, or just until the fork in the road?"

* * *

Belle realizes she's not alone as Eoghain teases her, saying he'd make the effort to drive her home in his dirty cart for the small price of a kiss, for the air takes a chilly turn and she gets that feeling to check in the window to see if she's being watched by a certain spinner when she plays and runs about with Baelfire in the yard.

She knows her employer watches.

After bidding farewell to Eoghain, she enters the woods. Usually the walk is peaceful and soothing, but being spied upon has a way of setting her teeth on edge. This day belongs to her, so of course he'd come along and spoil it. She stops, but doesn't bother turning around. "You going to follow me the whole of the way home, Rumpelstiltskin, or just until the fork in the road?" she calls out.

It's silent for some time, and just as she begins to wonder if the feeling wasn't simply in her over cautious head—or if the watcher is not her master at all, and if so, if she should drop basket and run—when he appears beside her. "Just until the fork."

She jumps, startled, though she'd known he was there. Belle opens her mouth, but shuts it again, choosing instead to trudge on.

He keeps apace beside her. "And I wasn't following you."

"Then what were you doing?"

"Not that it's any of your concern, but I had business in the village." She scoffs, but doesn't argue with him. "What's the lock for?" he asks, pointing to the hidden lock in her apron pocket.

"The usual—a door," she answers deadpan.

"So I gathered," he grumbles. "Old Saorla's place is one room, aye?"

"Aye."

"Then that won't work. Made for an interior door, that is," he says. "Use it on the front door someone could lock you in." Stupid girl, Rumpelstiltskin thinks.

"Could have mentioned that before I bought it," she says without emotion.

"Ah, but you didn't." He raises a finger in her face, catching her lie through omission. "They gave it to you. Now why would they do something like that?"

She shrugs, "Maybe they like me."

"I highly doubt that," he says, then, surprising himself by words formed in his mind without any contribution from his better judgment or reserve, he adds, "The son certainly liked something."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's just I doubt much smelting got done during the your visit, dearie."

Belle scoffs, "Never known you to hold much vested interest in the success of the blacksmith."

He chuckles at that, "True enough."

They walk in silence, and he knows he should keep quiet, should go off on his own, leave her to her walk, but he asks, despite the overwhelming sense he oughtn't, "Does he court you?"

"_Court me?_" she asks, shocked.

"Aye, the son. Does he court you?"

"Not that it's any of your concern," Belle mimics, "but no, he doesn't court me—can't stand me. Feeling's rather mutual, actually."

"Good." He says relieved, followed by instant disquiet, because now she's staring at him like he's completely out of his senses—which he may very well be. "Good thing—help being so hard to find and all, if you be courting."

The two fall again into silence. Belle suddenly realizes that it is the first that they have been together alone outside of his home. The occasion did not bode well if a predictor of future dealings. They arrive at the fork in the road, dividing their two halves of the forest. Rumpelstiltskin turns and nods awkwardly at her, "I'll just bid you good eve—"

"Are you ever going to stop following me?" she asks, impatiently.

"I already told you—I wasn't following. Went to town for a ladder."

Belle raises her eyebrows, taking in his empty hands, "Carpenter fresh out?"

"Went to look, thinking it over tonight for purchase on the 'morrow," he retorts, but damns himself instantly afterward—now he'd _have_ to return to the village tomorrow. "Luck with the lock," he wishes with a sour tone.

"Good night," Belle says, equally sharp.

They part ways, and Rumpelstiltskin runs the conversation over in his head again and again as he walks home. Runs over how stupid he'd sounded—Zoso agrees. Runs over how incomprehensible his motives had been.

He runs it over as he tries again at his books, with much the same results as earlier in the day. He runs it over as he spins at his wheel. He runs it over as Baelfire returns home and chatters about his goings-on. He runs it over as he begins to prepare their supper. He runs it over as he can't seem to find his cast iron cooking pot.

The missing pot gives him pause. Odd, that. _Very_, _exceptionally _odd, that.

There of course, is only one person to blame for a missing pot, and though Rumpelstiltskin cooks well enough in a different one, and though he's enough money and magic to buy plenty more just like it, he wonders after the absent item.

_Cocotte _she'd called it once, the little iron cooking pot, commented on how her mother'd had one just the same—though not to him, never to him. The girl almost always speaks exclusively to Baelfire. Doesn't mean he can't hear, just because she seems to pretend so.

Yes, he'd need to learn more about this one, his maid.

* * *

Belle returns to work early as ever, pleasantly pleased with herself for the night before she, under her father's lucid guidance, attached the lock to their front door. The installment appeared to do the job well enough, and the fact that her father sits safely tucked away inside gives her a measure of comfort she's not felt for some time.

She smiles to herself, setting down the _cocotte_ to begin stoking up a fire in the outdoor, stone over. After the fire takes, she picks up the pot again, to go fill it down in the river.

"Morning," Rumpelstiltskin says, brightly, behind her.

She drops the pot, barely missing her own feet. It rolls around on the ground on its round belly between them. "Gods above," she pants, a hand to her chest. "You scared me. You're up early," she says after catching her breath, surprised. Then, Belle notices his expression, wicked and gleeful. That's never a good sign. She's in trouble. "Can I get you anything?"

"Nothing more substantial than an answer." He points to the little pot, still teetering. "Where was that last night?"

Seven hells. Belle realizes she'd forgotten herself and taken the pot home with her two nights previous, not remembering she would be absent and unable to return it the next morn, it being her day off from work. She feels utterly and entirely stupid. Though the stupidity pales slightly when next to her fear of her employer's disturbing mood this morning. Rumpelstiltskin watches as she gulps, and she can see that he's enjoying this. "At old Saorla's place."

"Oh, I know. You took it. Why?"

She looks at him hard and is surprised, because she thinks he truly has no idea of her reasons. "I took the leftovers from dinner for my father." Then she adds, for its true as the rest, "and myself."

The words put a crease in his brow. "Food?"

Belle shrugs, "I can't very well make two dinners, now can I?"

"And you don't take anything else?"

"No, just the dish."

He narrows his eyes at her, trying to find deception, "Just this one time?"

Her cheeks go red, "No, sir. Every night."

"You've never stolen anything else, truly?" he asks, scrutinizing her.

Belle shakes her head, "Just that."

He's silent, staring. At length he says, "You may proceed."

"What?"

"Well, it's just a bit of food." He waves a dismissive hand, "I'd be a right tyrant to take injury over leftover scraps." He snickers at his own joke, and perhaps it's the tension, but Belle can't help but add her own breathy laugh to it. "Right."

Walking away, he tells her again, "You may continue, taking it home."

"I won't forget to leave it, before my free day."

Rumpelstiltskin stops. "There's no need—I can manage a single night without it."

He leaves her, and Belle can't help but stare after him, shocked to not only still be human, but to be thankful.

* * *

Later that morning, as Baelfire gets ready to leave the house, Rumpelstiltskin halts him, at the door. "I need you here today, son. The wool's to be washed."

Bae nods obediently, but as he moves to take off and hang up his cloak, a voice from the hearth calls, "I though you were going to get your new ladder today." It's an innocuous enough statement—were it not for Rumpelstiltskin knowing his maid better than that. Irritating mite of a girl.

"Oh yes," he says. "That's right. Thank you ever so much for reminding me, dearie." As he prepares to leave, he catches her smiling to herself and knows that no cauldron could be so entertaining. He'd very much like to wipe that smirk off her face, but then she'd know for certain he'd been lying the day previous. Can't have that.

So Rumpelstiltskin goes back to town to buy a ladder. He completes the task quickly enough. Seamus the carpenter was always an honest tradesman. The man's clearly shaken at playing host to the new Dark One, but bears up, shows his wares, and makes the sale without incident.

Then, before leaving, mostly to be a bastard, but also so as to avoid the hassle of lugging a ladder under arm halfway through the forest, Rumpelstiltskin snaps a finger, vanishing the ladder to his new home. Seamus trips at the sight, falling back into a coffin, leaning against the wall along with its brothers. The fall takes down the coffin and three more behind. It's quite comical, but the carpenter does not seem to get the joke.

Rumpelstiltskin leaves feeling rather self satisfied. A loud wail from down the street draws his attention. He follows the sound, coming upon a crowd, surrounding a large man, raving on unsteady feet. Rumpelstiltskin sees that the man is without his right arm, ending just above where his elbow should rightly be. His sleeve flies grotesquely with his erratic movements. They give the man a wide berth.

"Shite, the lunatic's at it again." Rumpelstiltskin sees that the owner of the voice is Marcas, the apothecary. He continues, turning to another man in the crowd, "You know her well enough—run up to the house and tell her he's got out again."

Rumpelstiltskin moves closer, but still behind the group. He sees that the apothecary addresses the fat egg seller. Eoghain shakes his head frantically. "Have one your boys go. I'll not go up there."

"Oh, let 'im be." A woman's voice, and he can see that it's Agnes, the old herb seller. "He'll wear himself out soon enough."

Marcas speaks again, "I told her to put the man away, but she'd not hear of it."

"That Margie—beauty, but a funny girl, with a father that odd and out of his senses, taking work from you know who."

"Margie? That's not her name."

"Blacksmith said that's her name."

"You're drunk, old woman. Stranger told me her name's Verna herself just yesterday."

It suddenly all makes sense to Rumpelstiltskin, and he blurts out, "That's the girl's father?"

The three speakers turn to him, wide-eyed and shocked. The egg cart man ducks his head and darts away, fast as his short legs can carry him; the apothecary shakes his head after Eoghain. Finally, the hedge witch replies, taking out her pipe to do so, "Aye, your maid's da."

Rumpelstiltskin eyes the lunatic, who true enough, appeared to be wearing out, his steps more stumbling than not. "What's wrong with him?"

"Spell of bad blood that is," Agnes says, taking a few puffs.

The spinner and the apothecary exchange a glance at the woman's superstitious answer, for even Rumpelstiltskin knew enough to know her answer far off the mark. The old woman had too many a wives' tale tucked close about. "And he does this often?" he asks.

The old woman shrugs, but Marcas says, "From time to time."

Well that explained the interior lock.

As they stare at the insane man, Rumpelstiltskin realizes that none of the villagers are going to lend a hand to the mad stranger. He does not realize he himself is going to either until when the lunatic stumbles, he finds himself lunging forward to catch him under his left and only arm. He sets the man upright, the crowd staring at him, shocked.

Addressing the crowd, he barks "Don't you all have business to attend to?" They immediately scatter away from the glare of the Dark One.

Rumpelstiltskin sighs, looking up at the placid madman. He makes his choice more out of irritation with the village folk than anything else, for they'd have just let the man run about, and that sits ill with the one-time spinner. He pushes away the fact that his choice also comes out of a shared feeling of shame and hatred over being a local spectacle. He decides to take the man back home to old Saorla's place.

Luckily, the witless man allows himself to be led, docile enough. They walk in silence, and Rumpelstiltskin sighs in relief when they escape the stares he feels from the village windows into the safety of the anonymous woods.

"I thought you'd be taller."

Rumpelstiltskin looks up and notes a consciousness in the man's eyes—so the madness came and went apparently. "I see where she gets her loose tongue," he replies.

The father chuckles lightly, "What her mother always said."

"Have a name, lunatic?"

"Aye, Maurice," he answers. "And you're Rumpelstiltskin, the Dark One."

"Yes, I am."

"She said you looked strange, but—" the man stops, tensing, however, he manages to force out the next of his words, "But any who can best an ogre can look however he pleases, I think."

Rumpelstiltskin does not answer. They continue in silence. He does not let go of the man's arm, nor does the man, Maurice, pull away. When they arrive at Old Saorla's place, he awkwardly drops his arm.

At the door they find the lock now disassembled in pieces on the ground. He looks up to Maurice and his missing arm, in disbelief, "You did this?"

The man shrugs, "It appears so."

"How?"

"My tool set, around here somewhere." He enters the old hovel, side stepping bits of the lock. Maurice holds the door open, and after a few moments, Rumpelstiltskin accepts the invitation. Entering, he looks around, though there's little to see. A few tied bundles of herbs hang from the ceiling in one corner, on the table sits two bowls and a cup, his maid's second dress hangs on a rung near the one bed—that gives Rumpelstiltskin pause, for he's a guess as to which of the two sleeps on the floor.

"She really should hide the thing, but I keep forgetting to tell her by the time she comes home."

"What thing?"

"My tools," Maurice has taken a seat at the table. He holds up a small leather pouch, which Rumpelstiltskin assumes, holds tools of some sort. "Just not smart, me having 'em."

"Can you put it back?" he asks.

The old man raises his eyebrows, "I suppose so—though I don't remember taking it apart. You're right though—wouldn't want her finding it in pieces." He looks Rumpelstiltskin in the eyes, "It would go faster with two hands."

He nods at Maurice, and together, they move the two chairs in front of the door and get to work on reassembling the lock. Rumpelstiltskin holds the various pieces in place, while the old man uses his tool kit to attach them using his left hand, and though clearly not the hand of natural preference, he makes quick and relatively deft work of the lock—it is obvious he is a man used to working with his hands, Rumpelstiltskin thinks.

"Must have leaned out the window to do it," Maurice says, shaking his head at himself, though his expression is a touch self-satisfied. Once finished, they return inside. Maurice seats himself again at the table. Rumpelstiltskin remains standing, eyes darting about.

"She doesn't know what to make of you." Rumpelstiltskin turns to the madman, who doesn't sound so mad at the moment. "Won't say much to me about it, of course, but you're a hard one for her to read—and not many are, I'll have you know. My girl's a quick one. Just doesn't know what to think."

"That would make two of us." He turns away, investigating the few personal possessions lining the hearth. Picking up a small pouch, Rumpelstiltskin asks, "So, old man, what happened to the two of you?" He opens the leather pouch, and finds a ring and necklace inside. Both are finer than he'd expected, gold, though rather small. The necklace is common enough, but there's something strange about the ring, and he brings it closer to inspect, but as he does so, realizes the lunatic's neglected to answer his question. "Old man?"

Rumpelstiltskin turns and finds Maurice slack-jawed and glassy-eyed. He walks up and waves a hand in front of the man's face, to receive no reaction. It made sense enough, for he'd seen many a soldier return in such a state (and more than a few children). "Something rather awful apparently."

Yes, yes, he'd be needing to learn more about his maid, and soon at that.

He returns to the hearth, putting the jewelry back in its proper place. He picks up the other items, a worn, little prayer book, and beside that, a finely carved pipe. He picks up the pipe, clearly shaped by careful hands, and wonders if it now served as a sign of a craftsman's impotence. Setting it down, he asks the lunatic, "Came in from the south, wasn't it?"

Maurice makes no reply, and Rumpelstiltskin has seen all there is to see in Old Saorla's hovel. He leaves, locking the man inside, and on second thought, he exerts a touch of magic to keep the lock in place.

* * *

The maid's finished with his reading lesson, and putters about behind him, straightening up the living room before asking to leave for the night. Rumpelstiltskin smirks as she approaches, the _cocotte_ full of the supper's leftovers in hand.

"Do you need anything else?" she asks.

"No, you may go, _Margie_," he says, finally looking up from his writing desk. She freezes, a hand on the doorknob. Slipping off his half-moon spectacles, which she'd suggested after taking note of him holding books at a distance, sometime back and he'd begrudgingly purchased and taken to wearing, he continues, "Or is Verna today?" When she does not answer, he stands, adding, "Why, pray tell, are you giving out false names?"

"Perhaps I liked having a laugh at the village's expense, for we both know I think myself so high above," she says to the door.

He takes her by the shoulder, forcing her to face him. "You're lying." He watches her closely, for he of all people, knew the power of names.

"I'm not. Let me go home now," she says, frowning at him.

He thinks to make a quip about her idiot father, send his regards if the man's of a mind to hear them or some such, but at the last second holds his tongue when Baelfire springs to the fore of his mind. He imagines his own son, struggling to take care of him, were he the witless idiot. Rumpelstiltskin makes a note tomorrow to tell his son that if ever he goes out of his senses to take him into a field and leave him for the crows before working himself to death for them both.

For Baelfire, he spares the maid a little of her dignity and pride and makes no mention of her ailing father.

He removes his hand from her shoulder, stepping back. "I will find out." He opens the door and gestures for her to leave, "Run along now." She goes into the night, leaving him questions to investigate and short a cooking pot.

* * *

Vernas is a type of lemon tree found in Spain

The Lemon Hairy dye recipe I found on a number medieval websites

Tansy (also called Mugwort and Bitter Buttons) and Vervaine (Verbenna) are abortifacients


	6. I a child

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** I a child…

* * *

Baelfire's not stupid.

True, he might not have gone to war, like most the rest of his village friends, but he's not stupid, not a fool in the least. Sure, he might not be able to read (well, used to not be able to read, but he's getting better every day. Belle even said so), he might only be the son of the common, town spinner (or actually, the son of the man who used to be the common, town spinner), he might only be a boy a day and a curse away from war, but Baelfire's not stupid, not in the least.

So truly, he doesn't see why adults treat him as if he's stupid, dumb as the village simpleton and as dim as the town madman.

He's smart (he's also brave, or at least _tries _to be), smart enough to notice when someone's lying (or doing a really poor job of acting. Honestly, the two ought just leave the foolery to the yearly, traveling troupe).

He's smart enough to see that something's wrong in their home. Well, to start, the porridge is damned watery (Lachlann had started saying that word after he'd come back with Papa from the battlefields. Baelfire rather likes how it sounds, at least in his head. Lachlann hadn't been able to tell him the exact meaning, and Bae thinks it best not to ask Papa or Belle), but that isn't the real problem. O'course, breakfast still tasted quite good. Belle had added cherries and blueberries this time, so the water didn't _really_ bother Baelfire, it's just that he couldn't help but notice, is all.

The problem is that both of them, Papa and Belle, be acting very strangely. That couldn't be good. Certainly not _normal, _like they'd have him be believing.

Belle keeps dropping things (that's how he'd woken up, to the sound of wooden platters hop-scotching the floor). She also keeps looking at Papa every few moments. She makes sure their hands do _not_ touch (the way the rest of the villagers have taken to doing since his father became the Dark One).

What's more, his Papa looks _happy_. Not the good kind of happy, like when they'd delivered that late lamb a few weeks back that had been almost surely lost, but happy like when he's about to win a game of Sixes and Sevens (Papa almost _always_ wins when they play Sixes and Sevens—but Bae is getting better. He'd beat him next time for certain), almost like the face Lachlann wears when he knows a secret, like the time he knew before Baelfire that they'd lowered the soldiering age again.

When Rumpelstiltskin passes Belle his empty bowl, the maid jumps and his papa looks much too happy.

Yes, this had to stop, or at least be explained properly. "Papa, Belle," Bae begins. Both adults stop and turn to him, "What's wrong?" he asks them.

"Nothing," both answer quickly, together. The two exchange a strange look (one Bae knows they think he can't see, but surely that makes them the simpletons when he's sitting at the self-same table as they), before Belle scurries to the kitchen fire to wash the morning dishes.

"Nothing at all's the matter, son. What would give you a strange idea like that," Rumpelstiltskin says, rising from the table, not looking at Baelfire.

"You're both acting," he pauses, looking between the two of them, "oddly."

"We are not acting oddly, Bae," his father says, taking a seat at his desk.

The boy rolls his eyes. "Yes, you are," he answers back. The two older people in the room go stiff at their different work. "Is there trouble? _Am I_ in trouble?" he asks, suddenly worried, their actions a confirmation to his questioning.

"No, son. Of course _you're _not in trouble," Rumpelstiltskin says, impatient.

Baelfire looks about the room, confused. If there isn't trouble, and he isn't in trouble, then why are they acting so _damn_ odd?

Belle sighs, and pours what's left of the morning ale into a larger jug on stone hearth mantel to be used in future mornings. "Bae, there's nothing for you to worry over. If there's trouble, it certainly isn't your problem, or your fault," she says gently.

He knows she's trying to comfort him—she does that, sometimes, he's realized—but the words don't really work, just give him more questions.

She carries out a basket of clothes to be laundered, but puts a hand to his shoulder and says again, in her quiet voice, the one she uses at night, during their reading lessons (he likes that voice almost as much as the one she uses when they play together outside, sporting with his pig's bladder ball or, on occasion, with his kite), "Sometimes people just act oddly, but that's nothing to do with you, so when they do act funny, try not to worry your head over it, hm?"

Bae nods, and Belle smiles down at him, before going outside. When she's gone, he wants to ask his papa if she's right, that sometimes people just act in strange ways, and if it's only adults who do that, or people his age too, but when he looks over to his father's desk and sees Rumpelstiltskin hunched over his books, writing quickly and loud enough that Bae can hear the pen scratch at the paper all the way across the room, he decides best to leave the question to worry over and work out in his own head.

* * *

The morning was—as the young Master Baelfire, so aptly put it—odd.

To start, she lived, and Rumpelstiltskin remained quiet (smug, true, but quietly so). Belle had expected, after the previous night's encounter, his discovery that she had been giving out false names about the village, to return in the morning to some sort of angry confrontation. Demands for an answer, demands for her head (amphibious, or otherwise), but no, there'd been none of that.

Odd. Very.

She fears his outbursts—it's true—but _this_, the silence and normality, unnerves her the most. Like the long, hot days before a change in the weather, Belle lies in wait all day, for the storm to hit, the first flash of lightning to sign its name across the sky, sealing the deal.

She does the wash, collects up the ripe kale for that night's dinner, peals the potatoes that are about to go to sprout, prunes the rosemary and sage, tying the bundles tight together and hanging them upside down in her employer's large, outdoor pantry (even after weeks of working for him, even in her frazzled and suspicious state, Belle still can't get over her enjoyment of the cooking space at her disposal once again. It feels almost as good as that last large kitchen she'd been accustomed to, but she tries not to dwell too much on remembrance of places past), afterward she begins work at dislodging an invader she'd discovered the previous day, while planting a row of calendula. She hopes the plant survives the summer, for it adds so much in the way of flavor come harvest season, and what's more she'll be needing a constant supply, should the hair dye go as planned.

Rumpelstiltskin approaches when she least expects him, of course, in the late afternoon, as she fights off the invader: the beginning of a Lark's nest. She bats at the fragile startings from under the roof eaves with her broomstick, not hearing her employer approach.

Belle takes notice of him as he comes around the corner of the manor, clearing his throat. "Oh," she says, suddenly on edge and unsure—for Baelfire's away. She doesn't much like it when Baelfire's away-poking at the straw clippings with the top end of the broomstick. "Hello."

"Hello," he says, evenly.

It's the first two words they've directed at one another since the night previous, without Baelfire there to stand between them, and she wonders if this is the part where he loses his temper for good. Her nerves tighten, but still she does not stop her work—can't, really.

The half-nest finally gives way, falling to the ground before her feet. Flipping the broom around, she swipes at the last few pieces of twig and leaf still pasted to the walls with dried mud. "Something you needed?"

"Not at the moment, no." He steadies himself, clasping his hands at his front, taking in her movements. "I came to tell you I'll be leaving for a time," he replies at long last.

Belle sets the broom against the wall, turning to her master, surprised. That had not been the answer she'd expected. Threats, yells, a good shaking perhaps, but not his taking leave, certainly not that. "For how long?" she asks.

He shrugs and waves a hand dismissively, "As long as need be, I imagine. However, I'll return before your day off, rest assured."

Less than a week, in that case. She scoffs, but says nothing—for she'll not rest, assured or otherwise, Rumpelstiltskin present or otherwise.

He tilts his head at her sound, "What?"

"Nothing," Belle shakes her head, lightly, but without warning, he reaches a hand toward her. The sudden movement makes her flinch backward half a step. The last time he'd touched her he'd forced her away from the door, from her exit, and stood much too close to her and all her secrets.

At her startled jump, the spinner too flinches, pulling his hand into himself. "It's just—"

"What?"

"You've got—" he points to his own head, "a piece of straw."

"Oh, right." Belle wipes at her face and hairline, but to no success, apparently.

"No, back farther," he says, but even as he speaks, Rumpelstiltskin's already reaching forward. The maid doesn't flinch this time (though she naturally stiffens) as he leans in, plucking the single bit of hay from her curls. "There," he holds it up vertically, between them, for her appraisal.

"Thank you," Belle says, looking away from his face to the straw, contrasting and bright against his mottled fingers.

"No matter, dearie. No matter." They stay frozen for a brief moment, in that humid afternoon, waiting on a storm (for there will be one, surely-the air's been thick and muggy for days), before he drops the strand with an overdone flick of the wrist. "Now, about the rules," he dances the words out his mouth, taking delight in them. His voice rises a bit higher with each, "You know them already, I think: no skirting, no snooping, and no stealing," he raises his eyebrows in question, "and keep watch over my son, keep him out of trouble. Think you can manage all that?"

"I can manage," she says with a nod.

"Good," he says, and for just a moment, Belle thinks he looks almost like he did that first day, when they'd met, softer or perhaps, as peaceful as he ever looks, whilst spinning at his wheel. "Wouldn't want anything tragic happening, in my absence, now would we?"

Or perhaps not. She must have imagined it.

Suddenly, she realizes a potential problem. At Rumpelstiltskin's reminder of her earlier theft, Belle realizes she has need to take from him again. She regrets the question, but knows she has no other option but to ask it and trespass on one who already begrudges her much—Belle does not relish the loss of pride. "There is one thing-Can I borrow something?"

"Borrow, mistress? What must you _borrow_, pray?" he asks, derisive.

"I've need of one of your glass bottles, from the medicine chest."

"To what end?"

"Why, the containing of a liquid, I'd imagine."

He rolls his eyes, "You'll not get it, if you'll not even answer my question. It would be my bottle, after all, doing the containing."

Sighing, she tells him, "I need it for some of the herbs, from the garden harvest." All her words are true—just not the entirety of her reasons, her intentions, for Belle plans to use the glass bottle for her hair dye.

"Just the one?" he asks, and she nods a quick and curt reply. He thinks for a moment, "I see no reason why not. Do as you will, take one from the cabinet." She almost smiles at the leeway, but imagines that it only goes as far as his good will, unpredictable and not far reaching on even the best of days.

Rumpelstiltskin turns to leave, but Belle stops him, "Is that all?"

His words are broken unevenly, some heavier than others and not fitted together properly, like the ruined Lark's nest on the ground, "What else were you expecting, lass?"

Belle heaves a sigh, running a tired hand over her eyes and scratches without aim through her dark hair. What had she been expecting? "Nothing, I guess."

Rumpelstiltskin frowns and shakes his head at the mystery that is his maid, but says no more. He turns and leaves just as awkwardly as he'd come, as he'd instructed, and as he'd answered.

* * *

Belle realizes that perhaps her memory is not so good as she first imagined it to be (and perhaps a touch what her father feels like when he's half without his wits on his middling days). The problem happens that she does not remember the hair dye potion so well as she'd hoped.

She has all the proper ingredients, and mixed them up into a potion of sorts. She's collected the sulfur and alum, as well as the walnut bark and shell, grinding the four into a fine and easily sifted powder. She's juiced the lemons, straining out the skin and peelings, leaving a cloudy liquid. She's added the tincture of calendula and chamomile, the apple vinegar (gentlest, if she recalls correctly), as well as the ground saffron and marigold blossoms. Yet, the whole of the endeavor feels off.

Belle growls, gently knocking her head against her work surface, for she works at the dining table, in the mid-afternoon.

Perhaps it's not so much the fact that the potion does not feel proper, but the fact that her nerves do not feel proper, that she feels so very different from the little mademoiselle who learned and tried this potion so long ago-it feels different and wrong, not because of any improper measurement, but because Belle herself feels wrong and different (well, maybe not wrong, but certainly no where near that little wisp of a girl, who'd come out unscathed, excepting hair a horrid shade of red).

In addition, so much rides on the success of the potion that all of Belle cringes against leaving it up to chance and her own faulty memory.

She exhales heavily and sits up straight to take a look again at her concoction when a loud thud causes her to jump out her seat and turn swiftly, looking for any sight of Rumpelstiltskin.

She doesn't see the pig's bladder ball until she's tripped backward over it and lies sprawled unceremoniously on the wood floor.

Baelfire hops into the room, through the open window and runs over to her quickly, offering a hand to help her to stand, "Belle, I'm so sorry!"

Morraine races in through the front door a moment later. "Are you alright, Belle? It's all my fault. I'm not very good at kickball, but Baelfire insisted." She says, looking sideways at the blushing (but dashing) boy, "I told you, I couldn't play."

Belle rubs at her tailbone, she'll be bruised tomorrow for certain (perhaps even by the evening. One would think after years of sleeping on the ground that a little fall wouldn't cause her to bruise, but bruise Belle knows she shall), however she can't help but smile at the children. "Perhaps a gentleman would let the lady choose the game, think you not?" she teases her young master.

"Morraine always wants to play sword-fighting, and we played sword-fighting last time," Baelfire complains.

The girl pokes him between ribs and he makes a small cry of pain (not true pain, of course, for the young boy knew not true pain, for which Belle couldn't be happier). "You just don't like it 'cause I always win the fight."

"It's not fair; I didn't go to war, so I don't know all about sword-fighting, like you do, Morraine."

Belle cringes at Baelfire's unknown blunder, but the boy doesn't know that war is more than sword play and toy soldiers, doesn't know that to say it unfair that he'd missed his chance is to twist the dagger in the wound.

Morraine too cringes (it's not lost on Belle that Morraine visits on days when Rumpelstiltskin is absent, but for the first, she wonders if it be not the Dark One the young girl fears, but the memories he brings).

The maid thinks on what to say to smooth over the moment, try to distract everyone who didn't mean it, never meant it, but still hurt all the same, watching the younger girl twirl a lock of light hair, not looking at the boy, when a very different idea occurs to her.

Belle suddenly realizes how stupid she'd been. "Morraine, you've blonde hair!"

The children look up at her at the exclamation. "Yes?" the girl says, still holding her strand. "I do."

"If you can keep a secret," she says, leaning in close. "I need your help," Belle finishes, smiling from ear to ear.

* * *

An hour or so later, the three stand outside in the yard, beneath the full sun.

At first, she'd worried about bees—for she wouldn't put the girl in harm's way, simply to ease her own fears, but after thinking on the matter, she doubts the stinging creatures to be much of a predicament. At least Belle hopes not, but the garden lies on the other side of the manor house, and it's too early for the honey suckle to be in bloom, so she doesn't have to worry overmuch about bees just yet.

She works on a basket she's been weaving to keep at Old Saorla's place. The dry straw she works with irritates her already-dry hands. Resting for a moment, Belle hopes the concoction doesn't dry Morraine's hair the same consistency.

"Morraine, let me have another look," she calls over to the children. They play at sword-fighting, Baelfire finally giving into his friend.

The girl walks over, wooden sword still in hand. She kneels at Belle's feet and bows her head, allowing Belle to run her fingers through the sticky mop. Satisfied that the girl's hair is neither burning, nor drying out too badly, she adds a touch more of the liquid at the crown. "There, that should do it."

Standing, Morraine asks, "Will it really be lighter? And shine in the sun?"

"I think so," Belle tells her with a smile, "I certainly hope so."

The younger child smiles back and leaves the maid, who watches as Morraine takes Baelfire unawares. She takes a swipe at his rump, the boy having turned his attention to practicing his letters in the dirt with the tip of his own sword. "Hey!" he yells, pulling up his toy sword, countering the girl's second blow. "That's not fair."

"No fair on the battlefield, Baelfire."

Belle frowns at that and watches as the girl steadily sends Bae backward, on the retreat. Morraine quickens her blows, one after another, and at last, the culmination of very poor form and footwork, the boy trips over a tree root. On all fours, he scrambles backward. With three more jabs of the sword, the girl disarms poor, embarrassed, outmatched Baelfire.

When she hoots, crowing her victory, Belle stands, deciding its time for teaching—for teaching them both.

The once-soldier, sly as ever, picks up Baelfire's dropped sword and when Morraine twirls round, still celebrating, the maid engages, tapping the girl's sword, with sufficient pressure to surprise her.

The girl's eyes go wide, as she has to move fast, to meet Belle's sword. Morraine goes on the retreat, though with better form than Bae.

"With ogres, I too learned that they know nothing of fair play," Belle says, taking her time, going easy on the girl, but gaining steady ground, "but with men, there is honor in battle—even if the war didn't teach that to you or I." She picks up the pace, "There is nothing wrong with honor, in honorable victory, but," and with her strongest blow yet, Belle forces Morraine back, into a tree, and with a two twists of the sword upon the girl's wrist, disarms her. Moving the sword to the center of Morraine's torso, Belle says even toned, "There's no honor, no glory, in beating one you know you can defeat from the start." She steps back, raising an eyebrow, and bends to pick up the girl's sword. She hands it back, adding, "You played him false, aye?"

The young girl, wide-eyed, nods, accepting the wooden sword.

"Good, you see it." Belle nods, helping the girl to stand. She then nods her own head toward Baelfire, "Now, help him up."

Morraine hurries over and helps Bae to stand. The boy looks on, just as wide-eyed, "Belle—that was—that was—"

"Nothing. I knew my own skills and hers," she says, looking at Morraine. She gives no indication that she took pleasure from down-dressing the girl—-for that would defeat the whole purpose of the little lecture-lesson. "You both could do as I did with enough practice."

"Truly? Can you teach me?" Bae asks, eager as ever, as any young boy at war games.

"Not yet, but Morraine will teach you first," she says, looking over at the shocked, child soldier. "Aye, you—you teach him what he did wrong, how you were able to take him on, as you did. Then, and only after, I'll teach you both what I know." Belle shrugs, "It's not much, but the knowledge is yours, if you should so desire it."

The two nod, and relegating Belle to the background, they set to work on Baelfire's foot form. "You were turned wrong, Bae," Morraine tells him, and slipping behind, takes hold of his shoulders, adjusting his posture to match his footing. Belle smiles at the blush on the boy's cheeks. "Good, like that," she says, "exactly, now bend your knees."

* * *

"Well, stranger, I'll be damned," Marcas, the apothecary, says the next day, when Belle brings Morraine into his shop. "I think you did it—you turned straw into gold," the apothecary says, examining Morraine's hair, turning her head from side to side. He runs his fingers through it, looking closely at the girl's scalp, "Nor did you burn it," Leaning close, entirely business-like in manners, the man takes a quick sniff at her scalp. "Interesting," he reaches out a hand, not looking away from the girl's head, "Let me see what you've mixed up."

Reluctantly, Belle pulls the glass jar from her pocket and passes it to the apothecary. Holding it up, he shakes it, swirling the fogged, faintly yellow liquid contained. Still spinning the bottle, Marcas says, "Out into the sun, with you, girl."

Morraine runs out, the two adults following behind. She looks back at them expectantly.

"Well, go on then," the apothecary orders, "move about. Let me see how it catches the light."

The girl turns a bit for them, and true enough the hair practically glows in the sun. Marcas uncorks the bottle, but doesn't look away from the yellow locks. He breathes in the potion with care, fanning a hand over the mouth of the jar, so as to save his nose the worst of its potency. He breathes in the scent before saying, "Lemon, I think."

Well, so much for secrecy as to her ingredients. "Aye, lemons, for the most."

"Hm, can't do that in wintertime," he says, recorking the bottle, "Unless with preserves, or perhaps a new wine—might be too harsh, though, might burn," the last he says practically to himself, thinking it over in his own mind.

Morraine suddenly freezes in her forced movements, giving the apothecary a harsh look, "I don't want burned hair."

Marcas chuckles, "You needn't worry yourself, child, we won't be experimenting on you and your hairs, now." He smiles, as a few of the village girls approach Morraine, to look at her yellow-ed hair. "What else did you add, stranger? There's vinegar, if I'm not too far off the mark."

Belle frowns, nodding, "Vinegar, apple vinegar, and many herbs."

The man looks at her sideways, smirking, "Secretive with your potion, aye?" He shakes his head, "You women and your bloody recipes. My wife's the same way." Sighing, he adds, "like I told ye girl there, you need not worry over me. I'll not be stealing your recipe, just don't go a-selling it behind my back, aye?"

"I won't," she says immediately, immensely pleased.

"Alright then, now, about our deal. I'll take more a'this," Marcas says, raising the bottle. "Before market day next."

"And you'll get it," she reaches for the potion, "soon as I have my sleep draught, for my father."

"Now, stranger." The apothecary raises a hand, to ease, to calm—though for Belle, it has the exact opposite effect, setting her mind racing to anger, to arguing her case and their deal.

"No," she says, lunging for the bottle, but he pulls it out of reach. "You promised me."

The apothecary looks about, "Aye, I did." He pockets the bottle and turns away, walking toward the town's main thoroughfare, though in no obvious hurry. He turns back, 'Well, come on then, stranger."

Belle follows, wondering what he's on about, but entirely certain she'll not bend before getting what she wants. It takes her half the thoroughfare—though she gets a fine look at the three girls from the other day in the shop admiring Morraine's lighter hair, as well as a few other village girls, even a few of the younger wives—to realize where Marcas leads them.

He's taking them to the tavern.

Belle pulls in a deep breathe to yell to stop, that they'd have it out here and now about their agreement, but suddenly, that wave of exhaustion hits her, the one she feels all the time, but most strongly when she takes a moment to breathe, whether hanging clothes to dry, or resting her hand from beating stains from clothes down at the river's edge, or storing the Colcannon for supper because Rumpelstiltskin's gone on some fool's errand so she's picked much too much from the garden, or raking at what's supposed to be the garden trying to break ground that simply does not want to give way.

Or when she's lost count of the sheep in the evenings, both those in Rumpelstiltskin's pens and the ones in her own head, behind her eyes at night. Though with the last she can hardly count more than need to on a single hand before sleep takes her. She wonders briefly if they have that silly old wives' tale in these parts, that to count one's sheep, one's blessings, be luck and the best way to be lulled to sleep, like the shepherd king anointed by Only Host, that the clerics and maunts taught her about all those summers ago.

That exhaustion hits her, and suddenly, she simply doesn't have the energy to yell, to do anything but follow the apothecary. Belle shrugs and decides all she does have the energy for is to have a drink.

She follows the apothecary into the small, village tavern. Carefully stepping over the threshold, she takes stock of the place. The public house is the largest in town, with two stories, though it boasts no fine, wooden floor. The second story serves as an inn for visiting travelers—though the only visitors the village has had in some time are Belle and Maurice.

Dotted around the dirt floor, standing between the bar and fireplace on opposite walls, are five wood tables, along with chairs made from half-hewn logs, like the shelves in Marcas' shop. The furnishings and floor give the place the feeling of still very much behind outside, though within.

The place is empty—for the time is early afternoon—with the exception of the town drunk, who sits near the fire, rocking and waving very slowly, clearly already pissed for the day. Or from the day prior, as the case may be.

She follows Marcas to a table near the corner, shadowed and distant from the rest of the establishment—the man wished to have words with her, apparently. Belle takes a seat, suspicious, "What's all this about, and if you start begging off our deal, I'll be having my potion back right now."

The apothecary opens his mouth to answer, but the alewife interrupts him, coming over to take ask their fancy, "Bit early, ain'it, Marcas?"

"If I drank like your husband, than aye, it'd be rather early, mum," he replies without pause. "Two mugs, whatever be least kept over-long," he orders, waving a hand.

The middle-aged woman scoffs, looking affronted, but says no more, hurrying off to fetch their drinks.

"Now, stranger, understand, I never imagined you'd come through." He gestures, raising his shoulders, but Belle's unmoving and stoic expression offers no understanding, "I don't have your sleep draught."

"Then give me back the hair dye," Belle says, extending a demanding hand.

"Didn't say, I wouldn't get it, but I just don't have it yet." The alewife returns and sets down two mugs, with a loud thud. She leaves without a word, not bothering to wipe up the two spills she'd carelessly created. Marcas picks up his mug, taking a large swig. "Had I known—eh," he gripes, Belle's face still unforgiving, "What's done is done." Marcas pulls a bottle from his pocket and passes it to Belle.

It's not her lemon potion.

"What's that?" she asks.

"Something for your father." She opens her mouth to protest, but he waves her off, "For time being, you'll have to make due with what I've got."

Belle takes it, her mouth a hard, disgruntled line. She uncorks it, taking in the scent and the vigor. "This won't work—it's not strong enough, not even close." She recorks it and holds it out to return to the apothecary.

"It's all I've got, girl," The man raises his hands in apathy. "You'll have to use that 'till the proper stuff arrives from town."

Belle doesn't nod, doesn't give any sign that she approves, only huffs indignantly, pocketing the bottle, all the same. Of course she'd make do. She always made do.

She pulls out her coin purse, to reimburse him, as per their agreement, but the other holds up a hand, "You need not, mum. It's simple stuff, as you know. We'll settle our deal when the syrup arrives."

Belle nods, surprised. "Thank you," she says—though still stiff in tone.

"Least I can do," he says, taking another drink. Belle picks up her own mug, not arguing the point.

* * *

When Marcas hollers out an order for a second mug, Belle refrains, for it's been some time since she's imbibed anything of true strength, and she already feels her head swimming. The apothecary teases her, asks if she'd rather milk to drink.

Belle does not find the joke amusing. She laughs all the same, but tells him most firmly (or she'd meant to tell him most firmly, but imagines she comes out vaguely decided), "I'm not a child. It's just been a while, is all. So don't treat me like a child!"

The apothecary laughs at her, and after a few moments, Belle joins him. When they finish, they're both smiling, "See," Marcas says, "'Tis not so bad, after all."

"What's not so bad?"

"Us—the village," he says, waving to all around them. "Don't know why you don't like us. We might stare a wee bit, but you can hardly blame us."

Belle frowns, sobering a touch, "We live far out. I work most m'time."

The man shakes his head, and waving his mug at her, he says, "Excuses, and you be doin' yourself no favors, lass, for 'em. The distance don't help you none."

"I don't ask no favors of you, or anyone in this place."

Marcas shakes his head, "You and your master both, then. Both of you's so damned arrogant-"

The words are cut off, as another man slaps him shoulder, causing him to splash his drink all over the table. Belle wipes away the few drops that managed to land on her face. "Marcas, y'old dog, already at the tavern at this time, with some young filly." The man gestures toward to her with his also bemugged hand, but she answers, frowning, "I'm not with him, nor he with I."

Marcas chuckles a strained sound, "Aye, not together."

The other man doesn't seem to catch on to their anxiety at being linked to one another, saying, "Well, well, tis all for the best, that—you can hardly keep Carlotta and your wife from each other's throats. Don't know how you'd manage a third."

Belle chokes on the mug she'd been sipping, and coughs loudly, trying to dislodge the liquid.

"Sharp eye, now," The unknown villager pats her on the back, "Can't 'ave you dying in a place like—" He pulls back his hand, as if burned, when Belle looks up. "I know you. You're the—you're his, that is, you work for _him_."

A cackling across the room turns all three heads, "Took you long enough," the town drunk yells, swaying dangerously in his seat. "Didn't recognize his little maid without her wee, white cap on, aye?" The three turn away, as the drunkard continues to hoot to himself.

"Apologies, mum. Meant no disrespect."

Marcas rolls his eyes at the other man's fear, but does nothing to refute it. "Stranger, this be Mercer Barclay."

Ah, the man who traded in cloth. She'd heard Rumpelstiltskin curse him enough to recognize the name. "Well met," she says, in a tone that suggests otherwise, "and you know who I am already."

The man, Barclay, nods, then clearing his throat adds, "You wouldn't know, mum, when, uh, he, your master that is to say, will be bringing his stock?"

She thinks over Rumpelstiltkin's efforts at washing, carding and spinning the wool. It would finished soon enough, but the mercer need not know that (and the naughty idea gives Belle pause, wondering if, not Marcas, but the once-spinner was absolutely right in his appraisal of her, that she finds herself so very high above these lowly villagers, taking delight in teasing and toying with them), "I wouldn't make to know the master's business, sir."

With that, she shrugs, finishing her mug (almost choking on the grainy, last sip—she can feel the bits of leaf and herb used to spice the ale, myrtle perhaps, stick to the roof of her mouth), she stands and fishes out ample coin to pay for her drink. Setting it on the table, she tells Marcas, "I'll be bringing you more hair dye. Soon as I get it done." Belle leaves without so much as a backward glance—though she does trip on the raised threshold. She still hears the town drunk's laughter even after the tavern door shuts behind her.

* * *

Stumbling back, she hurries home. Belle feels as if the entire village stares.

_Look sharp-there goes the drunk daughter of the lunatic—Dark One's drunken maid-perhaps she's crazy as her old man. _

The cool of the shaded woods provides immense relief, the swimming of her head, slowing a touch.

She treks through the woods at a steady pace, somewhat paranoid—she drank too much, said too much, felt too much—toward Old Saorla's hovel of a house. Baelfire told her, on the way to the village that morn, that he was to stay with his friend Lachlann, taking supper with the family and sleeping there as well, so she's freed from her duties for the night.

Unlocking the door, she hears her father call to her through the window, "Back early, Belles?"

She smiles at him, glad to see some measure of recognition (she only hopes he won't note her own slightly inebriated state). She makes their dinner, telling her father of the success with the hair potion, and of the growing affinity to Morraine, what a tough little thing she's proved to be—though Belle neglects to mention the girl's involvement in the Ogre War. However, the omission proves to be for naught, when next he tells her, "That reminds me, a woman came to the door, today."

"What?" she asks, confused.

"Aye, came late, and asked after you, but I said you wouldn't be back till dark. She said she couldn't wait that long, but that'd be coming back, some time soon."

Belle sighs, apparently he's let go his wits today, same as ever. "Oh, papa," she says sadly, though on second thought, she wonders if its not for the best, not wanting him to remember her manner after having been to the tavern: a slight slur in her words, her steps stumbling more so than usual.

"Didn't say her name, but she'd been a light haired woman too. She'll be back, don't know when, Belles, but soon. Soon, she'd said."

Belle says nothing more, shaking her head, nor does she sit down to eat with her father, when she finishes cooking the meal—his change for the worse having caused her to lose her appetite (that or the ale, one or the other).

Instead, she moves her chair to sit by the window, arms resting on the sill. Before she can stop herself, she wishes for some solution, some magic and boundless answer to solve all her problems simply—remembering the lore of old, the sacred nature of stars, and the stories of the great men who tracked their movements to decipher the birth of kings and gods.

Then, Belle grumbles at the ridiculous idea, rubbing furiously at her face-just her face, certainly _not_ tears. She looks up into the elevated glen, where their hovel sits. Of course there's nothing in the overgrown yard.

"So, you had a good time in town?" Maurice asks.

She turns away, smiling with half her mouth—at least he can feed himself today, she thinks. Shrugging, Belle replies, "Good as it ever is, I suppose." She regrets the sentence, knowing she should hide her melancholy from her father, for he's enough reasons to block out his sense of reality. She need not give him any more.

"Then what's got you upset, my girl?" he asks, and the look on his face is so sincere, so very much the father she remembers, that it makes her want to confide in him, confess her fears and loneliness. She thinks on Marcas' words, how distant she makes herself from the village folk. How the only conversations she has are ones where she already knows herself to be the brightest of the party. It's a lonely thing, to be in this place, so isolated.

"I guess, it's just that there's no one here I can really talk to," she admits. Belle looks up to see her invalid father's face fall, so sad and full of regret on her behalf. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean that, about you. We talk."

"No, my girl," he says, softly. "We don't, can't."

"I'm fine," Belle tells him, staring at the dirt floor, making patterns with the toe of her shoe, like Bae with his toy sword the day before. "Really," she lies.

Nodding, though not convinced, simply pacified, Maurice turns back to his meal, "Your spinner'll be back soon—that should keep your mind busy enough."

She scoffs, thinking to herself, that yes, her father was most certainly out of his mind today.

* * *

Three days, and still no master returned.

It's the longest Rumpelstiltskin has been away, and Baelfire grows impatient, or at the least, restless. He follows close at Belle's heel, all day, as she moves about her work, planting spring onions left by Morraine, as well as Coltsfoot, the coughaid she'd found growing nearby. Follows as she dusts the shelves, and follows as she washes and hangs to dry the bed linens.

Still, what the boy finally resorts to, to remedy his agitated state, catches Belle completely off guard.

She's gone home for the night. She makes herself busy, reheating that night's meal, and plucking down a few leaves from one of the bundles tied together, hanging in the corner of Old Saorla's hovel, she crumbles them in her palm, stirring them into the borrowed _cocotte_. Her father seems well enough this evening, but Belle knows not to be fooled by appearances. Since his mention of some anonymous woman coming to their door last night, she's been hesitant in trusting the logic of his mind.

"Hello there," Maurice says out of the blue, the man's voice rising a notch, "what have we here? A stowaway?"

Oh the gods—here he went again. She grumbles, "Papa, now there's no one—"

"Lachlann _was _right," Baelfire says, "you're not mad all the time."

Belle turns, shocked to find the boy peeking a head through the open window, brown eyes even wider than usual. "Baelfire!"

"You must be Belle's strange, little fellow I've heard so much about," the old inventor says, jovial. "I'm quite mad, son, but no, not all the time," Maurice chuckles at the boy in the window.

The child smiles, but turns sheepish, noticing Belle's frown. "Good eve, Belle."

"Bae, what are you doing here?" she asks, an exasperated edge to her voice.

"Don't be daft, my girl, he came for a look—isn't that right, son. Nothing wrong with that," he says, turning to his daughter. "That's curiosity, that is. Inquisitive, a healthy thing in a boy, that is." Turning back to Baelfire, Maurice says, "Well, come in, son, don't by shy."

He hops in the through the window, not bothering with the door. "I just came to—"

"You came to gawk," Belle says, quiet but sharp.

"Oh, don't mind her, son, she doesn't much like people staring at me." Maurice waggles his stump of an arm, in a joking manner.

The two laugh, but Belle, on the other hand, finds nothing amusing in the gesture. "Bae, I need some help, will you go with me to fetch some water from the river?" she asks.

"But, you've got some right there," Bae points to the pot next to the _cocotte,_ half full of boiled water.

Maurice waves Belle off with his one remaining arm, "Oh my boy, it's naught to do with the water. She means to tell you not to ask why I've only one arm, and the like."

She scowls at her father, and picking up the pot angrily, water splashing out (though landing mostly on her own skirt, as luck would have it), she says, "Fine, I'll get the water myself."

Angry at being foiled, as well as being followed, Belle leaves the two men, stomping down to the river's edge. When she arrives, she sets the pot down, sliding down against a tree trunk, to sit on the damp ground. The voices follow her from the house, even down here. She cannot make out their words, but their tone is pleasant, happy, even.

It's too much.

Belle pounds her head against the tree, feeling the rough, uneven surface of the bark, gently at first, and then harder, faster. She throws her head back, punishing herself for the mess she's made, for the fact that she can't make those happy sounds as easily as the other two, that she has to retreat, always retreat (_run away_, is more like it).

She pounds her head against the tree, until, when the wind picks up, she feels something wet at the back of head go cool with the breeze. Belle reaches a hand back, touches the moisture, and when she brings her hand to her face, even in the dusky light, she can tell that it's a small amount of blood coating her fingers.

With her clean hand (only outwardly, of course, a superficial façade of cleanliness), she picks up the pot and takes it to the river's edge, where she submerges it, along with her hands, all the way to her forearms. She takes her time with the filling, simply letting the current run over the pot, as well as her arms, lets it run her over.

Briefly, she splashes water on her face and the back of her head—couldn't very well return to the house with blood in her hair, now could she. Finally composed, Belle trudges up the hill. Once close enough, the voices become discernable. They're laughing, she realizes. As she approaches, Belle peers into their hovel. The two sit at the table, Maurice explaining to Baelfire the different tools in his kit and their uses, her father sounding so alive, so much like the man she used to know.

Her heart fills to the brim, and Belle wonders if she might not die for the feeling of it.

"—And you're in earnest? The world's truly made up of little, invisible bits?" Baelfire asks the inventor.

"Truly, my boy, truly," Maurice answers, wryly.

The boy still looks skeptical, so Belle adds, confirming, as she walks through the door, "He speaks the truth, young sir."

Baelfire looks up, "Belle, you're back! Your papa wants to show me how to work the door lock, but only if you say it's alright. It is alright, isn't it?"

"Of course, it's alright," she says. "It's fine."

* * *

The boy shares their dinner (his second, but he's a growing adolescent and is largely hungry the entirety of the his waking hours). He makes for very pleasant company, and after the meal, as Belle cleans, Baelfire explores their home—

Belle stills instantly, realizing that for the first time, she's thought of Old Saorla's place as _home_.

"Belle, what's this?" Baelfire asks, holding up a small, tattered book, pulling her from her shock.

She looks to the mantle, to find the boy holding up the only book still left in her possession, "Oh, that's my mother's scripture book."

"Never seen one of those." Without fear, the boy opens it, scanning the pages.

"My boy, Belles here, tells me you've been learning your letters and books. Is that so?" Maurice asks, from where he sits at the table.

"Aye, sir," Bae says, sparing a quick glance to his teacher, "she teaches me and my father."

"Well, then, read us a bit, won't you?" He tells the boy, "you see, my girl here won't read to me anymore, and I'm a bit slow in the going, my eyes not what they used to be."

Baelfire looks at Belle, who nods to him, "Give it a try, Bae, I'll help you with the difficult words."

Hesitant (but brave, Belle thinks, very brave), he opens the book, perhaps a quarter of the way, and clearing his throat reads out, "_And then, Only Host's an-an—_"

"Sound it out, Bae."

"'… anointed?"

Belle smiles, "aye, very good."

"_And then, Only host's anointed king went up upon the sah—_"

The maid walks over, wiping her hands on her apron, unsure of the word without looking. She peers over Baelfire's shoulder, at the sentence, "Ah, it's 'sacred', Bae."

"… _the sacred mount to con-consult and cast lots with the—_"

Belle cuts him off, prompting, "that's 'Oracle', one who can tell the future."

"Like a fortune teller? They've got those in the traveling troupe every year."

"A little like that." She nods, "go on, you're doing well."

"… _to consult and cast lots with the Oracle of those parts_."

Chuckling, Maurice says, "I remember this one. King doesn't listen. Ends up losing his heir and crown for it."

Baelfire furrows his brow. He turns from Maurice, to the maid, pointing in the small book, and asks, "Belle, what do the little numbers mean?"

"That's how prayer books are divided up into smaller parts. The numbers help those who memorize it, or study it, to remember, more like a song, I suppose."

"Who would need to do that?" the boy asks.

"Oh, many people, the clerics and maunts mostly. Friars too, I suppose. Though, they all study it in the old tongue. My mother's book in all likelihood would be frowned at, being written in the common language."

Maurice nods, laughing again, "You've no idea the pains I went to, getting her that little thing."

Now, emboldened, the boy flips through the aged pages, opening to the middle section. Belle recognizes the verse, as he begins to read slowly.

"_Sacred bond and kiss, to your petal lips, ve—ve—_"

She takes the book from his hands, "Perhaps a different section, young sir."

Bae looks up confused, "But why, and how do I say that word, and the one after?"

"It's 'veiled hellebore', Bae."

"What's that?"

Maurice chuckles in the background, as Belle explains (but only partially of course, for the verse holds a double meaning), "it's a kind of flower. Lenten rose, you might know it as, though we called it True Love's Kiss, in my place."

The older man says, with a smirk, "You're beet red as your mother, rest her. Now teasing her, that was some amusement."

Baelfire looks between the two adults confused, "What's wrong with that part of the book?"

Belle sighs, frowning at her ornery father, explaining, "There's nothing wrong with it. It's simply, perhaps, a bit old for you. It's a love letter, you see, from a king to his betrothed."

"A letter?"

"Aye son, a very open letter, my girl means to say, that leaves little to the imagination." Maurice says, winking, "though poetic, I'd say, though I'm hardly a judge on that."

"_Papa_," Belle implores. Turning to Bae she says, "Just avoid that section, aye?"

The boy nods and takes the book back. She watches him, but the honest boy, flips through the front and the back, avoiding the suggestive and innuendo-filled love song.

"What was your mother's name," Bae asks.

Belle opens her mouth, but before she can answer, Maurice says, "Marie. Her name was Marie."

* * *

Marie lived a provincial life, lacking very little, having been born into a lesser ranked noble family. She was the youngest of the daughters, but she was also the prettiest. It was always assumed that she would marry up into the higher ranks of Avonlea nobility—what's more the Duke of Avonlea and the greater Southlands had a son a bit older, and who could know, perhaps a match was not so far out the range of possibility for young Marie.

However, the range of possibility, which Marie always took for granted as only what was presented directly before her—she'd grow to be a logical woman, that much was obvious, but never an imaginative one—expanded beyond all preconceived ideas and parental aspirations, the summer she turned thirteen.

She meets the tinkerman's apprentice that summer.

They meet only in passing. Her father went to the summer fair to look at those new bows the tinkerman boasted, with metal string and better range, without loss of accuracy. He takes his youngest along as a whim, being young and pretty, her parents can't help but favor her.

The young apprentice catches her eye, and somehow the two end up in the back of the caravan full of the tinkerman's wares, where he shows her a spring-loaded box he works on to tell the time, even on cloudy days.

"… and it's better than those old, leaky water clocks any day. Damned things break faster than you can fill 'em—"

"_Maurice, the hell are you off to_?" the tinkerman yells, and the two part, but all year, in the back of her mind, at balls and jousts, even in the chapel and in confession with her prayer beads, Marie, wonders if she'll see him, the tinkerman's apprentice ever again.

* * *

They meet the next year, and the year after that, and of course the third.

"You're crazy, Maurice, absolutely stark-raving mad," Marie twitters, giggling like wind chimes (he could make those—could make _her _those). "That's not possible, and you're just having a laugh over my stupidity—'tis not kind, not kind at'all."

The apprentice had just explained the tiny, invisible pieces that made up their world, or tried to, at least, with terms the young noblewoman could understand. He'd taken his lunch bread, broken it and used the scattered crumbs as an object lesson (what was one lunch, when he could sacrifice it to hold her attention for that single hour?).

"It's true as that little book in your pocket, I swear it," the handsome young man says—he's two years older, and oblivious to the stares of the other young women in town, only seeing this pious, out of reach, angel. He leans closer, and with a wink, adds, "maybe even truer."

The young girl's mouth drops, and she swats him on the arm, the rosary about her neck swaying in a highly distracting way—really, all her talk of modesty, and then she wears those tightly bound dresses. "Maurice, you can't speak like that."

He chuckles, "Only to you, lady Marie, only to you." They smile at one another, blind to the rest of the world that is the busy city of Avonlea.

So blind, they do not see Maurice's guild master, the tinkerman, until he's completely upon them. The older merchant grasps the young lad by the ear, yanking him fiercely. "I didn't contract you to flirt with nobility, boy, back to work."

* * *

The next year, Maurice alone returns, explaining to Marie that his master had died winter last, and shockingly enough, left his caravan and all his fortune, little that it was, to his young apprentice.

"And all these years, I thought he hated me," he tells Marie, as he digs through piles of metal and wooden bits in the back of the caravan. Finally, he pulls out a copper plate and kettle. He returns to the front and passes it to the castle cook, "Here you are—needn't no fire, simply leave the plate in the sun, uncovered and it'll boil without the need to be bothering at the hearth."

The cook pays for the novelty, still looking skeptical, but curious, all the same. After the large man waddles off, Marie asks, "And he left you all these things?" For his wares looked different this year, more intricate, not the simple bits and leftovers she'd grown accustomed to seeing.

Maurice shakes his head, "No, I made these. No one knows, but it's easy once you get the idea, to make life simpler, free up your time with just some oil and a few springs," he implores passionately. Suddenly, a line appears between the man's brow (for truth, he did become a man during the past year, beard and all, Marie thinks). Maurice leans toward her, brushing her hair away from her shoulder. "How the hell did you get that?" he asks, pointing to a large maroon scar marring her white neck.

"Oh, that?" she says, embarrassed. She moves a hand to cover it, but Maurice takes her by the wrist, removing it so he can continue examining the scar, "Burning myself, it was quite silly actually," she says, taking back her wrist.

The inventor—for he's no tinerkman, that's for certain—turns away, rummaging through his piles. He pulls a jar from the lot, and says, "How? Leaning over the kitchen fire?"

Still shy, still red in the cheeks, she says, "I was, trying to curl my hair-it's rather straight, you see."

Maurice blinks. True, his girl usually wore her hair braided or down straight (or, his least favorite, in those prim and proper netted buns). The man's aware of the ways women try to make themselves more beautiful, sells a few in fact, with their powders and their oils, and the long metal rods for their locks. He realizes instantly that she was curling her hair for him, making herself more beautiful for him. "Well," he says, passing her the jar, "those irons can be dangerous. Be more careful next time?" he tells her, not as a question, but as a request.

Marie nods, and opening the jar asks, "What's this?"

"It's to help with the burn. It's new, something I've been a-working on. Helps with the scarring too—"

"_Inventor,_" the shout breaks their moment, and the two turn to find themselves face to face with the captain of the Duke's guard. "Are you the inventor?" the tall, well-built man asks, looking at Maurice (but also sparing a glance in Marie's direction—for she is a beautiful thing, curled hair or no).

"Aye, that I am, sir."

"Then, I've been ordered to escort you for your audience with the Duke. Says you've some soldiers' inventions to show him."

"Oh, yes," Maurice says, expression brightening. "That I have. Just, give me a minute to gather some example ware." He hurries about the caravan, closing and locking up his shop for the day, as well as packing up a bag to take to the castle proper. In the bustle, Marie attempts to pay him for the salve, but he absolutely will not let her.

* * *

The rest of the summer, they do not meet, nor does Maurice open his shop again.

The Duke keeps him busy, with projects to do with the defense of the duchy. Maurice oversees the creation of a series of spring-loaded bows that shoot three times as far, and knives with a minute spring that flips the blade out its scabbard, easily hidden in clothing folds and pockets, for fighting hand-to-hand (though it crosses the inventor's quick mind more than once that they could also be used for easy assassinations).

His largest project, by far, is the complete remodeling of the castle portcullis.

He remakes the thing with, of course, springs, but also levers and pullies. When it's finished, the gate requires significantly less manpower to open, but also locks into place when shut. The Duke pays Maurice in coin, but also in praise, and suddenly, the inventor's name is known to everyone of age in Avonlea.

There is one, however, who does not take as much pleasure in his stardom, and that is Marie, for she misses him something terrible, and its worse than in the winters, for she does not have her daydreams of summertime to keep her warm, instead she only has thoughts of how he's forgotten her (she uses his burn salve religiously, and true to his word, the scar fades before summer's end).

On the final day, before most merchants not local to Avonlea pack up to return to their homes till summer next, Marie goes to Maurice's usual market spot.

She stops in her tracks, hands clasped as if in prayer about her necklace, for there he is. The man moves at lightning pace, packing away his little wagon of wares. Marie cannot move, her breath held fast in her chest, but luckily the man turns to pick up a bag on the ground, and spots her, instantly.

Maurice drops the bag, staring, and Marie finds the courage to smile at him, so small, she wonders if he even sees it.

The inventor grins back, and suddenly he's moving. He hops into the caravan and she hears him banging about, in his usual, harried manner. She takes tiny steps forward, each a little less difficult than the one before.

When she arrives at the caravan, Maurice emerges from the wagon. For all the frantic movement, he looks terrified. He forces a hand forward, "Here. For you." Marie takes the gift, and examines it. At long last, she realizes it to be a curling iron—but unlike any one she has ever seen.

The iron is not iron, not any kind of metal at all.

"I had it made from sketches, I thought over what would heat, but not burn so bad as all that iron.' He scratches the back of his head self-conscious, "didn't do it all myself, couldn't really, had the potter make the cylinder, out of ceramic—that is, ceramic, it's a bit like bricks, you could say—"

Marie smiles and imagines she might just cry for all his babbling, "I love it." She speaks true, loving the token that speaks of affection, deeper and more honest than any rhyming sonnet written by a paid court scribe, or promises of jousts and tournaments won in her honor.

_This_-this strange man's even stranger gift speaks of the heart.

"Now, I know it's not much, but when I leave, I'll be finishing a house, and though it'd be less than you're used to, accustomed to, I could make you all manner of things to make your life easy—all of it, any of it, it's yours, if y'll've me," he mumbles the last and looking at the ground between them adds, "I understand, o'course, if you don't want me, that is, if you don't want to marry me-"

"Of course, I'll marry you, you crazy man." She says, quietly, and then louder adding, "Of course, I'll marry you, Maurice."

* * *

At the end of summer next, they marry at the harvest feast—though her parents are not completely pleased with the prospect, the inventor had made a name for himself, and that was justification enough for them—and a child is born in the spring (_early_ spring).

She returns to Maurice's little house—their home—bearing her trousseau, her carved rosary with the inlaid porcelain, and three Verna lemon trees to be planted in their yard.

When they arrive, Marie would be lying to say she wasn't a little surprised at how small the place was, but the concern recedes when Maurice shows her the small chapel shrine, to her namesake, Saint Marie, the Queen Mother, he built for her prayers in the back, behind their home, with stone steps leading from the backdoor, so her feet would not get wet when it rained.

They name their child Belle, for like their life, she is beautiful.

After Belle's birth, for the first three years, Marie tries for convention in the raising of her daughter (and after consulting with many a midwife, learns that a daughter is all there is to be), but things pass from parent to child, no matter if they are desire or not, and it soon becomes clear that Belle, like both mother and father, is not destined for convention.

The girl works in her father's workroom, fetching him tools and mixing the oils, exchanging the embroidered skirts for a boy's breeches. She swims, and runs, and climbs trees (though not the lemon trees, sensitive and delicate as they are—as Belle is _not_). There is one concession to Belle's unconventional raising: Marie insists on sending Belle to Avonlea in the summers to be taught the feminine arts and court etiquette amongst her cousins (though her distant family's charity only extends so far, and Belle works between lessons with the scullery maids in the laundry basements to earn her keep).

It is a provincial life, providing all that she needs, but some day she wonders at her choice, then she thinks on that little copper pot, that boils all on its own, and of her curling iron, and of their well that didn't need to be turned by hand, and those hands that made all these gifts and more, her hus' hands that are put to use in so many better ways with all their time to spare, thanks to his inventions.

Yes, Marie, wonders at her choice, but always concludes that she made the right one. The right one for her, at least.

But for her daughter Belle, now that is another matter entirely.

All winter, every winter, Marie works on a proper gown for her daughter, in which she can attend the Harvest feast, as any noble girl, with the hopes her daughter can catch a more conventional husband—she is beautiful, after all, with her fair skin and dark hair, but her father's curls and his blue, blue eyes. Perhaps, Marie thinks, her daughter can fulfill that role and marry up. The Duke's son now had a son of his own, who could know, perhaps a match wasn't so very far out of the range of possibility.

The years are hard, and they are not rich, but they love, and that is more than enough for Marie.

* * *

When Belle comes home the summer of her twentieth year, bringing word of the Ogre War, Maurice thinks nothing of it, but Marie, on the other hand, worries. She recalls the summer they wed-or was it the summer before? Been so long, she can't quite be sure-and remembers the reason her parents acquiesced to her strange love affair, to the world (or at least, world, so far as Avonlea and the greater Southlands was concerned) famous inventor, known for his defense equipment, his soldiers' dressings.

She begins to pray in the little chapel to her namesake, Saint Marie, not once, but twice a day, kneeling at the small pulpit (built by careful, lover's hands, for his tiny wife), runs the prayer beads through her hands, rubbed smooth with oil from her fingers, from years upon years of use. She whispers the words, over and over: _Holy Mother, Full of Grace, Curse-breaker, Full of Grace._

Marie prays even when it rains, makes the walk to the chapel, hopping from stone to stone, her feet never touching mud, more than a few stones needing to be unearthed and reset over the two decades or so that they've been wed. She prays even as the seasons change, when snow falls and covers the ground.

She prays even when she catches cold and ought not leave her bed—as Belle their beauty says, but she's just a child and cannot know the extent of a worried wife's devotion and piety (and faith, too).

All the same—and she's still sick with that petty cold—the letter comes.

It bears the seal of the Duke of Avonlea and the greater Southlands, bids the world famous inventory come to court, and build great machines for the facing of the inhuman foe. The family knows there is no other answer but to agree to the commission.

Marie dies two weeks after of pneumonia, and it is a struggle to bury her (Belle rides to three different farms, in three different directions to call on boys and old men left behind to help break the ground, cold and solid as ice) behind the little chapel to Saint Marie, her namesake.

The next day, Maurice and Belle lock up the house and ride for Avonlea to invent and build machines of war.

* * *

"It's getting late," Maurice says, in a rare moment of self containment (for he loves the company, Belle can plainly see, but knows that he's libel to lose himself, with the topic as well as the late hour). "You'd best be getting to bed, Master Baelfire." Belle sighs in relief at her father's use of the teasing title. At the mention of her mother's name and prayer book, she'd worried that he'd disappear inside his head, inside his despair.

The inventor notes his daughter's thoughtful expression—for he's no fool, though he's not had his dead wife's book learning, "Don't look at me like that, Belles." He motions out into the night, with his remaining hand, "Walk the boy back, I'll be alright."

She thinks for a moment, but seeing no other solution, but to leave the man alone, she nods, "You heard him. Come on, _Master_ Bae." They leave, but not before Maurice extracts a promise from Baelfire to call again soon; the boy needs little convincing, having taken a shine to the old inventor.

The two walk back through the forest slowly, quietly—though Belle slower, and Baelfire quieter.

They are more than half way back, before she realizes (and now who's the one lost in one's own head, hm?) that her charge is awfully quiet, too quiet, taking in shallow, jagged breaths. "Bae?" she asks, stopping. She puts a hand to his shoulder, but the boy pulls back, "What's the matter, Bae?"

"Belle—" and the little boy's voice cracks, "I'm—I'm sorry. I did come to gawk. I did." He begins to cry in earnest, and the maid moves to pull him close, to comfort him, but he pulls back again, "I didn't mean to be cruel. Honest, I didn't."

Finally, the child allows himself to be pulled into an embrace. "It's alright, Bae."

"I didn't like it, when people stared at papa either—I should know better. I'm sorry," he confesses, words muffled in the hold.

"Shh, shh," Belle soothes, patting his back, between his shoulder blades, slow and gentle, like a mother, like _her_ mother. "It's alright. I forgive you, and I'm sorry I yelled at you over it."

She releases him, and he wipes at his face, sniffling, "It's okay, Belle, I deserved it."

Putting a hand to the boy's cheek, she says, "Hush now. All's well." She ruffles his hair before adding, "We need not worry over today, for today will worry more that enough over itself." She loosely quotes her mother's book of verse, though the boy knows this not, and Belle decides that he doesn't particularly need to know, neither.

They continue in their walk, Baelfire composing himself, Belle wondering after this friend of his, Lachlann, and if perhaps she should keep an eye on that one. The son of the once-lame spinner breaks the night, speaking out, "Papa didn't like it when they laughed at him—" the boy pauses before adding, in a darker tone, "and I didn't like it, either."

Unguarded and hidden in the dark, with this fellow child, it's easier, to reply honestly—Belle answers Baelfire's sentiment in kind, "I don't like people laughing at my papa too. Don't like them laughing at me."

The boy nods, understanding, and the two children walk home, parting with all between them forgiven, their separate fathers in the fore of their separate (but oh so similar) thoughts.

* * *

The next day, she's on all fours, scrubbing the floor, skirt knotted on both sides, at her knees, and sleeves rolled to her elbows. She's sure she must look ridiculous, and so that's when Rumpelstiltskin chooses to make his entrance.

Of course, he'd return when it's easiest to make her look the fool.

She hears the door creak, the thud of boots bigger than Bae's on the wood floor, feels the change in the air. "Back already?" she asks, sarcastic, "We were beginning to wonder if you'd gone for good."

"Oh no, not gone for good, just held up," Rumpelstiltskin says, voice light, "by town gossip."

The maid doesn't look up from her scrubbing. "Is that so?"

"Oh yes, heard the most interesting things in town," the Dark One says, taking his time with the words. "Belle," he says, "Belle of the Southlands."


	7. and Thou a Lamb

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything.

**Summary:** AU, Belle is Rumpelstiltskin and Baelfire's maid from The Return.

**Prompt:** ... and Thou a Lamb; Rumpelstiltskin gets a glimpse; Met up at midnight at the hanging tree

* * *

"Belle," he says, "Belle of the Southlands."

The maid's hands freeze, fingers curling around the boar's bristle brush she'd been using to scrub the wood floor, and in that silent moment, the room shrinks and grows hot instantaneously. Belle had yet to break a sweat from her efforts at scrubbing his fine floors, but she can feel the heat, just bellow her skin, in her veins and her blood, still dry and hot, not yet water dripping out her skin. It will change at any moment, and her head throbs with it, the dry sweat and pounding blood.

"Quite a name you made for yourself, in so short a time, hm?" He strides over, hands in the heavy pockets of his traveling cloak. His boots clank, and vaguely she thinks to scowl at him for tracking dirt where she's already cleaned. Silly thought, that. "How many died?" he asks.

"I don't know," Belle says, quietly, hands still frozen, and she can feel the wiry hairs from the wild pig, a few bent and poking out at odd angles from the base of the scrubbing brush.

"Scores?"

"Scores," she shrugs, "hundreds? I know not."

He bends at the waist and examines her, when Belle neither accepts his eye, nor moves at all, he straightens, "Shame what happens when war machines go awry. Killed the world famous inventor and his daughter they say," he walks slowly to his writing desk and leans against it, "strange then that I should find myself employing one such who fits that very description." Rumpelstiltskin makes a tsk-ing noise, shaking his head, "So, out with it, what have you to say for yourself? Just exactly how were you so fortunate as to escape that untimely end?"

"It was my fault," she says, and there's a release to it—someone finally knowing. "I was a coward," Belle says, staring straight ahead. "I was a coward, and I ran."

* * *

In her youth, Belle had watched the clerics and maunts transcribe their holy scriptures, one harvest's time, long, long ago. Her father had been sent a summons to service the support beams of a monastery deep in the mountains, leagues below the ground, below even where the dwarves dwelt. She'd been lucky enough to travel with him, after much begging and pleading with her mother.

She'd watched them write, the saintly scribes, not sentence by sentence, nor word by word, but rather by the letter. Letter by single letter, to ensure that the pages remained exactly the same, the meaning never changing, transcending time out of mind and followers innumerable.

That's how she speaks now: the words pouring out, without emotion, without emphasis, simply words, meticulous, completely focused and without pause. Like the novitiate authors: _look up, note the letter, dip the quill, write it, check it, pause, breath, do it all again. _

_Look, dip, write, check. Again. And again. _

_And again. _

_And again. _

_And again. _

She tells him of her father's machine, (their machine, really), their magnificent machine. She tells him of when her father had still been the world famous inventor, and she, his assistant.

She tells him of the arrival of the Duke of the Frontlands, come to help the Duke of the Southlands with his war campaign, and more so, interested in their magnificent and silent machine of war—what was to be the undoing of the ogres.

She tells him of the malfunction, the explosion in their workshop, down in the gutted wine cellars below the castle walls, how it blew a large chunk from the castle wall. She tells him of the Dukes' anger at the mishap and of their loss of faith in her father's abilities.

That's when the Duke of the Frontlands—Hordor was his name, Belle recalls—though up a solution to the problem. She tells him of the Duke's plan.

They could never place so much stock in the machine, when they had so much to risk in the war, when the thing had already backfired once. Maurice had assured both Dukes that machine would be sound, would be the factor that would turn the tide of the war to their favor in fact.

She tells him what Hordor says next. Then, the Duke of the Frontlands asked how sure.

The inventor said he'd bet his life on it.

The Duke had smirked: "Your life perhaps," he turned to Belle and added, "but what of your daughters?"

She tells him of the Duke's plan, to send the daughter of the world famous inventor to assemble and test the first device, while the father stayed behind to finish the rest. She would see how well it performed in actual battle, how well it ran when what the inventor loved most lay on the line.

She tells him how she left (though not who she rode behind, and of the heartfelt farewell Gaston bid her when he helped her down from his mount), how she came to the battlefields, how she watched on the transplanted crow's nest serving as the runner's outcropping. She tells him how she'd climbed up and watched as ogres worked to acquire a taste for table manners—that they did not simply kill their captives, rather they feasted on them, made an art of ripping limb from torso, sucking down blood and entrails, cooking over open flame the more tender cuts.

She tells him then of her fear: Belle did not want to die this slow, torturous death.

She tells him how she built. Slow going work, every day, she assembled the machine, the silent din of metal buffeted by strong arms (sometimes arms that frightened her).

It took a month.

She tells him of the water, how they added brimstone to fill the soldier's stomachs, to better keep down the rations. She tells him that she was spared these actions, that she had access to a supply of clean water.

"How?" Rumpelstiltskin asks, breaking her from her trance.

_Look, dip—freeze. _

_Drip-Page ruined. Start over_.

Belle looks up sharply at the Dark One, "A deal." She scoffs, "not that I understood it at the time."

_Fresh parchment. Write, dip, check. Again. And again._

_And again._

(And again, and again, and again. Every night. Again. Except that one night, when they'd brought the amputee to the doctor's tent in the middle of the night, a cloth in the injured man's mouth to stop the screams—_mustn't wake the ogres_—and he'd scurried from bed. As a last thought, he turned back, "Well don't just lie there. Get up and help me." She'd held the man down, as the blood dripped from where his leg used to be, bite marks the size of her fist visible, as visible as the red on white bone. She'd held him until he'd gone unconscious from the pain of the hot metal: the cauterizing. Afterward, exhausted, the man sleeping fitfully on the cot on the ground, she'd made to leave, but the doctor had grabbed her wrist with the same disinterest at which he'd remembered to beckon her help. He'd led her unfighting to bed, and they'd slept in a sweaty, dirty heap, the sleep of the dead—the only night she ever passed in his bed where they _only_ slept.

The doctor had known the horrors of the slow death as the ogres pick you apart, looking for the juiciest morsels. A deal he'd offered—a death, at the time of Belle's choosing, by her own hand—and a deal she'd taken.

She tells none of this).

_And again_.

She tells him of the testing on her war machine, how it had worked, silent and far-reaching. How they had sent word, with the aide-de-camp (the self same boy she'd seen when she'd neglected to knock at the entrance to the captain's tent and the doctor had laughed at her naïveté, oh, how he had laughed at her mistake) back to Avonlea, to the Dukes and her father.

She tells him how another month or two passed and the wagons finally arrived, with her father's armada of finished war machines, twins to hers, already assembled for the most. It had been a cavalry of sorts, and it had only taken a day to line them all up, on the front lines, quiet as nursemaids, and Belle, Belle exhausted from the assembly, exhausted from sleepless nights, had near on feinted in the evening. Her father, when the finishing touches were almost ready, sent her to sleep in the wee hours. "Dawn'll be here soon, my girl, and then we'll have a real show. Can't have you falling asleep for that."

She'd agreed, because he was her father, and she could be a child again, in a place where she'd been full grown, a woman and a spent one at that, so she slept the sleep of the dead, alone in her own tent, and woken to the dawn, bright and cold. After stretching, she'd rolled over, grabbed the ladle from her water bucket, from the doctor's clean supply, just another part of their dealings, put it to her parched lips—

She remembered.

She tells him, how she'd dropped the ladle, (tripped over it) as she'd raced from the tent, making noise, and not caring, _not caring at all_, that sound carried far to sensitive ogre's ears.

She tells him how she'd seen her father, balancing the ladder the aide-de-camp stood upon, pouring water into the radiator, and from there, still far out and running, she could see her father smiling. She'd screamed to stop, for all of the them to stop pouring the bad water, the brimstone-tainted water, into the twins, triplets, veritable multitude of machines.

Only they can't hear her. Only the ogres can hear her.

Her father had raised his arm, when he finally had noticed her, to wave, and then the explosions began.

All along and down the line. Fire Chaos, blood. Destruction.

She tells him of the aide-de-camp, head smashed upon a rock, beside her father's arm. She tells him of her father's delirium, and of the cauterizing, deep in the woods, of how she'd stolen goods in the midst of a camp in disarray, fighting ogres from miles and miles around, while fighting each other over whether to bury or simply burn the dead.

All so loud, none could hear the silent disappearance of the Inventor and his daughter.

_Check_. _Close book._

* * *

"Every machine?" he asks, finally breaking the silence that has fallen between them since the woman had finished her tale. She nods once. He makes a shocked noise in the back of his throat and her head shoots toward him. He opens his mouth to explain himself, but closes it again—there's nothing to be said.

"All of them—and their men with them." She looks him straight in the eye for the next part, and does not stop until she's spoken her peace, "Because of that, they began to use children—I wouldn't learn that for months, but it happened. Because of me."

They stare, and then, in a flurry of movement, she tosses the brush into the bucket of soapy water. It splashes out onto the floor. "So what are you going to do to me?" Belle asks, and her face appears like stone, but like those he took shelter beneath while on the run, supple and beautiful, despite their lack of warmth. He doesn't answer her right away, and she rubs her fingers against one another. They've wrinkled from the water.

"Do?" Rumpelstiltskin replies, all sarcasm and mock surprise. "Why I'll keep you well away from explosives, for one."

She turns to look at him, out from under her little bonnet that he'd magic-ed for her that first day she began serving him—that seems so long ago, and longer ago than the war (for that seemed forever near, only a day, an hour, a moment past), and the girl looks completely confused, not understanding him in the least, "I don't understand. Aren't you angry?"

He shrugs, "A bit, but then," he adds lightly, "I'm always a bit angry."

"You're letting me stay," Belle says, finally comprehending his meaning, "but why?"

He shakes his head at her and says in exasperation, "It's a done deal, dearie, you killed children, but not mine, and those that did die were hardly your fault at that," he says, and it's true enough. "You work hard, and I'm in need, beside, now that I know your secret, it seems you rather owe me a debt to the keeping of it. A wise thing, that, to have one's hired help indebted—makes disloyalty, shall we say, out of the question," the last he says with a certain flair of theatricality, and it's that last that reassures her she's in no danger today, from the wrath of the Dark One.

It shocks her, this sudden kindness.

His kindness always shocks her, for it comes completely out of nowhere, unwarranted, and often unearned—there's an absolution to it, a catharsis, and what's more, from the least likely to parcel it out.

"How did you know?" she asks, rubbing each sore wrist, from the afternoon's scrubbing, and before that a morning's work in the garden (her mind's in a tangle, and she knows not what to do _but_ rub her wrists).

"You came in from the south," He says, as he slips off his traveling cloak, hangs it on the wall, and takes a seat, to pull off his boots, one by one. "Wasn't too hard to follow your past stops. You're new at running," the spinner looks up at his maid as he explains, "but for me, well, it's been my life's work, you could say." He watches her, watching him, before finally biting out, "Don't just sit there, haven't you work to do?"

She gets to her feet, wiping her pruny hands on her apron. "The laundry needs doing," she says, and walking over toward the door, she pauses near him. "You wear that the whole time?" she asks, inclining her head toward his garments.

Rumpelstiltskin gives her a frown, and exhaling a half-hearted growl, waves her off, "You can see to it next time."

Belle nods and with the laundry basket hitched up on her hip, leaves for the river, grabbing his traveling cloak as she goes.

In her absence, the old spinner sits at his desk for a few moments before the restlessness begins. He thinks over the story, nothing shocking—nothing he'd not already known.

It had been simple enough to follow her trail backward, find those who recalled the strange description of a man missing an arm and out of his wits, accompanied by his beautiful daughter with the sad, striking eyes. He'd followed the trail to the edges of the Southlands, and by that time he'd heard the tale of the two lost souls: Belle and Maurice of the Southlands.

Angry, she'd asked.

Aye, at first—livid, in fact, but the more he learned, the more her past became clear, the more he realized she'd not been at fault for the deaths of all those children who came after, who almost included his own Baelfire, but rather, she'd been the first. The very first child whose innocence and blood came to rest at Hordor's feet.

If only he could bring the man back to kill him a second time.

While he changes out of his dusty travel clothes, he thinks over the other reason for his journey, his other search for answers. That, unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) had revealed no new information. Sitting down again, he wonders what he'll do about that—perhaps to the waters of the west? Yes, that would be his next destination.

Rumpelstiltskin opens one of his worn maps, and marks the dead ends and circles his new targets. As he looks at the map, however, his eyes stray to the south, and he wonders just where exactly the battle had been waged. He finds Avonlea (not easy, considering the large amount of cities and towns with names that begin with "A" but his reading's steadily improving and he finally spots it). He wonders, scanning the areas surrounding the city kingdom, where about her little farm lay.

Drumming his fingers absently, he decides that she'd been right, his clothes did need a wash after all, and best not left until the day next, very unwise that. He hastily rolls up the scroll and gathering up the clothing, he heads down to the river.

However, when Rumpelstiltstkin arrives at the usual spot in the river, where they wash, he finds no one. Frowning, he assumes she's gone downstream, for up, he'd likely have seen her while walking—though as to why, he can hardly imagine.

He follows the hillside which borders the river, taking his time, trying to think of the best way to give over the clothes and ask for her to point out her home on the map without either appearing to be a request, when something catches his eye.

He looks up and freezes instantly, where he stands.

A line of clean linens separates them, she and the river still a good distance off, but even where he stands—stock still—he can see that Belle of the Southlands, his little maid, stands in the river completely naked as the day she was born.

Rumpelstiltskin watches as she bathes, washing her face, legs and arms. He watches—can hardly look away—as she stretches her arms and back. She must be sore, he thinks, from the scrubbing.

The warm wind blows, every so often catching one of the cloths on the line, hiding her again from his view. The wind is warm now, and he realizes it's well into summer now. Belle's been with them a season.

Despite the line of clothing, he sees all of her: her back, her breasts, her flat stomach, her calves that he truly does enjoy watching when she climbs and descends the ladder rungs, her knees, thighs, torso, and neck, and when she bends at the waist to wash her hair, he's struck by the appeal to it, as he always is, when he sees her without her usual cap.

Once finished, she sits on the river's edge. Her hair curls as it begins to dry, and still he watches her, appraises her, like he would a batch of sheep's wool to be woven, or a strip of Bae's thread, now that he's begun to learn the art of the spinning wheel.

Her skin hangs off her bones, he notes, in a tired manner, tired as the rest of her, he imagines, as tired as her keen mind (for he's learned that much about her in their time together and from his investigations—she's no fool, his maid). Her shoulder bone juts out at a sharp angle, and that's it, Rumpelstiltskin realizes: she's sharp and angular, skinny to the point of unhealthy (a point he well-knew, though only he, never Milha, and certainly never Baelfire).

In that moment, watching her in the sun, feet in the water, naked and glorious, he wants to feed her, to fill her.

He wants to fill her skin, fill it with fat, fill it with life, the life that positively flowed from her (flowed out her so fast she hardly knew it, too busy feeling death and debt that remained behind in her loose skin), and of course, she's scarred (he wants to run his fingers over them, but imagines she'd not appreciate the calluses).

She's scars all over her beautiful body—aye, she's beautiful, there's no denying—and though it's the first he's seen her (not that he hasn't wondered. He is a man after all), he knows it's a sight he'll not soon forget.

Yes, he wants to fill her, though he still looks for another, going on search after search since killing Zoso and taking the dagger.

He'll not stop searching, chasing after a boat, a bastard, and a lost dream. It's a coward's penance, Rumpelstiltskin knows, a coward's effort, but oh, here and now, how he wants to fill her. He wants to fill her with himself, and she fill the spaces of him, so that perhaps together, two cowards could discover enough forgotten courage between them, and he wonders if—

Belle stands suddenly, wiping her tired eyes, and begins to turn round, to reach for her own garments lying on the riverfront. Rumpelstiltskin vanishes dirty clothes and all (and that night avoids her eye entirely).

* * *

In the days that follow her employer's return, Belle breathes a little easier for the confession, surprisingly enough. There's a release to it, his knowing, and of course, there's the fact that he didn't turn her into a snail.

She even goes so far as to wonder if she need fear Rumpelstiltskin quite so much as before, and why, when searching for the lighter, summer quilts, she stumbles upon the wedding wreath at the bottom of a trunk, she does not hesitate to pull it out to take a better look.

Belle pulls the ring of dried flowers from the bottom of the trunk, and though she handles them with care, a few petals still fall off. The festive symbol brings a smile to her face, as she recalls playing as a child with her mother's own floral crown, whilst pairing the over-large wreath with a tablecloth to completely her bridal play-set. The remembrance warms her, and without thought, removes her white cap, setting it on the ground. She walks to the hearth and pulls from the shelves a metal tray that she knows will do well enough for a looking glass.

Gripping the circlet daintily with one hand, she uses the other to unwind the ribbons wrapped around it, allowing them to dangle free, as they're meant to do. After balancing the tray upright, leaning back against the fireplace, she slips on the headpiece, laying it over her loose curls.

Belle smiles at her blurry reflection and toys with the ribbon ends. They're frayed and yellowed with age, but still a pretty token, all the same. She takes another look before slipping the wedding wreath it off. It's one of her regrets, not having taken her mother's wreath with her when she and Papa left for Avonlea. Although, Belle imagines it highly unlike that she will ever be in need of such a crown. She turns to return the heirloom to it's hiding place, when the spinner walks inside with another box of wool to be spun.

He gives her a cursory glance, before walking past her to his spinning wheel, but turns back when he realizes what she holds. He stops immediately, box still in his arms, "Where did you get that?"

"I—" she points to the trunk, "I found it, in the trunk."

Rumpelstiltskin, the Dark One, looks from the item in her hands to the mantle, where the tray still stands upright, and the man's uneducated, but he's no fool, he realizes what she's done. He frowns and continues to his spinning wheel, "Having a bit of fun, were we?"

"I meant no harm," she says.

He scoffs, "Of course you didn't."

Belle looks at him, back facing her, already begun at his task, spinning away. The words slip out, before she can stop them, "Your wife's?"

Rumpelstiltskin's foot stops, as does the wheel. After a moment, he continues, "Aye, my wife's."

"And Bae's mother?"

"Yes, that as well."

"What—what happened to her?"

The man cringes, for the girl just kept prodding and pushing, be it teeth or townsfolk turned mollusk; she never stopped, his Belle.

He crosses his arms over his chest, letting go his thread for the moment, "I—" he begins, but then, turns a little in his chair, "I lost her, nothing more to tell, really."

She watches the spinner speak about the unknown woman. He plays with the skin on his elbows as he does so, without realizing, and Belle thinks it a very human action.

He sighs, slumping down in his chair, "She was never really mine."

Belle frowns at that. "Did you love her?" she asks on impulse, upon hearing the sadness in his voice.

Rumpelstiltskin stares at her, stricken, and she wants to apologize, to take it back, because of the look on his face, but she doesn't (because speaking the truth is healing in an excruciating way—like the salt rubs the maunts used to make and sell to support their monastery). Just when she thinks he won't answer her, he speaks up, "I—I thought I did, but now, I don't know. Hardly know what love is."

Belle nods, because likewise, she wonders what the word means, wonders if she's even capable of it.

"And what of your betrothed?"

"My what?"

He rolls his eyes at her, at the idea that the bit of Avonlea gossip would have escaped him, "Southland's son? You think me ignorant of your little romance with the Duke's son?"

Belle blushes, embarrassed to have her youthful dalliance with Gaston not only known to her employer, but clearly embellished, "We were never betrothed."

"Close enough," he brushes her off. "That's beside the point. Did you love him?"

After a moment's decision, Belle speaks to him with an honesty transparency, "Women always love the first to notice them-haven't men learned that by now?"

"They do?"

"Yes, in a simple way," She nods, "Gaston imagined he loved me, I suppose, but then I was pretty enough, and we were both young-it's easy to imagine yourself in love when it's like that, between children."

You still are, Rumpelstiltskin thinks, smith's son can hardly keep his eyes in his head—

_And if he doesn't we can always teach him_, Zoso adds.

"But that's not really love," Belle says, drawing him back outside himself.

"It's not?"

"No," she shakes her head, "Love needs," she looks to the ceilings, looking for the right word for what she means to say, "_layers_, some kind of connection, something small even, like, oh I don't know, how you take your tea, for example—just something to stave off the monotony-the pain-of it all, of life, of age, I guess."

"And you didn't have that, with the Duke's on?"

She shakes her head, "No, we didn't have that."

Rumpelstiltskin nods, and wonders what they were like together, her and this boy—Gaston.

"What about you? Did you have that with her," she asks, quiet, "your wife?"

"No," he scoffs, sadly, "no there was nothing like that, no mystery. She was wild and I was her only option.

"But you have Bae."

"Aye," he agrees, "I've got Bae." The somber conversation ends, and he turns back to his spinning and forgetting.

"Oh that reminds me: Mercer Barclay wants to know when you'll be bringing your thread to him."

Rumpelstitlskin sneers, "I bet he does." The spinner sighs, "I've half a mind to sell to one outside the village, but I'll decide soon enough. The cheat'll have to wait until then."

Yes, Rumpelstiltskin thought, he planned to sell to one much closer to the sea, this year.

* * *

Rumpelstiltskin married.

It's a strange and funny thought, one Belle can't quite wrap her mind around. The notion of course had occurred to her before—he'd have to of been married in the past, to have a son. She'd always known this as fact, but when faced with the very real memory of a wife lost, well, it's something she's a bit of trouble digesting.

As she waits Eoghain to return, so she can buy eggs, the last thing she needs from market, she leans against the wooden beams of his chicken coop, wondering what the woman had been like, Baelfire's mother, this wife of Rumpelstitlskin's.

"Good morrow, stranger," a voice calls.

Belle jumps, surprised by the sound, and turns. She shakes her head, but replies, "Well met, Marcas."

The apothecary chuckles at her, "Startled you, did I?"

"'Tis no matter."

A large smile fills the man's face and he comes to lean against the wooden fence beside her, "There now, sounding a bit more like us, everyday now, aye?"

Belle frowns and realizes the slip of the tongue: she'd answered him with a touch of the local accent.

"Oh, no need to look so put out," he pats her on the back a bit rough, "'tis not so bad, as all that."

She sighs and turns back to the watching Eoghain's chickens, preferring not to answer with her true feelings on the subject of the locals and their accent.

"How's your father, girl?"

She shrugs, "Well enough. Do you have my medicine yet?"

Marcas shakes his head, "Soon, I promise it."

She frowns and opens her mouth to tell him how long his promises would last, when a commotion in the coop draws her eye. Belle turns and spots one of the cocks fighting another. They peck and holler, until Marcas waves a hand at them. "Shoo—g'on you."

They two separate, but Belle keeps watching the instigator. Though clearly the smaller of the two, no one would ever guess from watching the way the rooster strutted about. He liked everyone to know who held the power in the chicken pen, clearly.

Lightly, she scoffs at the show off.

"What?" the apothecary asks.

"See that small one, who likes to throw his weight around?" She points out the rooster in question.

He nods, "Aye, likes 'em to know he can defend himself."

"Remind you of anyone?"

The man laughs, "Aye, I suppose the resemblance be a little striking, but if we are talking about resemblance," he pauses and points to a loan hen, near to the bushes in the center of the pen, "then I can't help but notice her."

Belle frowns, rolling her eyes.

The man scowls at her, "Now, no need to be like that. Hear me out," he says pointing back to the rooster, "look, he keeps watching her, that one."

"I don't think so," she says, and truly, the two stand not even remotely close.

"Aye, but watch, he circles her, keeping his distance, true, but he likes that one."

She takes a moment, watches the chickens (whishes Eoghain would arrive), but unfortunately notes some truth to the shopkeeper's words. "Why, you think?"

"Because he can't unsettle her's what I think," he answers, not bothering to look at Belle, focused on the coop, "it peaks his interest."

* * *

Belle returns to Old Saorla's place before the noon hour. She's made a habit of trying to be home as much as possible, for she finds it best not to leave her father too long unattended.

She smiles at the fine weather, and as she reaches their little hovel, she thinks it highly unlikely that Rumpelstiltskin followed her today, and she's glad of it (can hardly imagine if he had heard what Marcas had said about the chickens). Truly having a day to of her own gives her a comfort that pleases her, and yet, she wonders why the change—if anything, the discovery of her involvement with the Ogre Wars should have added to his suspicions of her, not mitigated it.

She shrugs off the curiosity, for she was not like to find answers, and instead, unlocks the door.

"Belles," her father hollers out the window.

She jumps, clutching her chest, "Papa? You startled me. What is it?"

"Hurry, Belles, we've company."

"Oh papa," she says, not bothering to hide the pitiful tone to her voice. Sighing she opens the door.

"Apologies for calling on you unannounced," the voice calls from one of the two worn-down chairs.

Belle's eyes widen as she takes in the woman sitting in their home. "You're real," she says, shocked that, true to his words days prior, the blonde woman has come to call again, as her crazed father had said. She sputters out, "I'm sorry, but I thought—"

"That I wasn't coming back?" she asks, side-stepping Belle's reference to her father's bouts with insanity, and the inventor's daughter suddenly recognizes her.

"I know you," Belle says, squinting at the older, middle-aged woman—though still very pretty, with her yellow curls bound up off her neck, and a not-entirely tattered shawl about her shoulders.

"Indeed," the woman says with a smirk, "We've met before, at the old witch's place."

Belle's mouth opens with the realization. Yes, she knew this woman: Carlotta, the prostitute from Hangman's Tree crossing. They'd met sometime back at Agnes' hut. Belle had gone there in search of medicine for her father. The other woman had been buying the local Bitter Buttons.

"Carlotta," Belle says, entering the place fully. Sellslove the old hedge witch had called her, but Belle knew all too well just how bitter those transactions could be.

The woman smiles with full lips—painted a light red. "You remember after all," the whore says, pleased, "and you're Belle—or do you prefer Belles?" the last she asks in a condescending tone.

The daughter frowns, as she makes her way to the fireplace and tells her, "I'd prefer to know why you're here."

"Oh, the little maid's a suspicious one, but I wonder," the woman stands and walks over to Belle, examining her, as she arranges what she's brought back from the market. She does her best to withstand the scrutiny, and luckily drops nothing. "Is that the fault of your employer, or where you like this before?" She watches the younger girl for a few beats, but then turns on her heel, "Not that it's anything to me. You'll forgive the questions, but we don't get many strangers in this town, so when we do it's gossip fodder for some time."

The lovely woman shrugs, and her shawl sways in such a way that Belle's eyes are drawn to her chest. She wonders if it's a practiced movement, "Anyway, I've heard tell about the town that you make and sell hair dye. Is that true?"

Belle blinks, "Yes, but—well, I make it, but-"

"Hand it over to Marcas to sell. Yes, I know."

Mercer Barclay's comments in the tavern return to Belle—the apothecary and the prostitute are lovers. "Then what do you want with me, when you could go to Marcas?"

The woman scoffs, "Oh, dear, now don't tell me you're completely ignorant to the _wiles of women_—what would my lover think if he knew I bought hair dye to cover my gray hairs?" Carlotta exclaims, gesturing with an elegant (though dirty) hand to the roots of her hair. "Rather take away some of the romance, don't you think?"

The woman wishes to remain young in the eyes of her lover. The idea makes sense enough to Belle, but that still leaves a problem, "But I—" and her eyes dart to her father, who sits, tinkering with his tool set, trying (and failing) to look uninterested in the women's chatter, "I gave my word I wouldn't sell it myself."

The woman makes a mocking gasp and then throws her hands toward the younger girl, "Well I'm not like to tell, if you're not, and besides what harm will it do to sell to little old me? None." The woman strides over to Belle, "And I'll pay you twice what I'd have paid Marcas."

The amount seizes Belle's interest—a heavy weight in her apron pocket it would be. Carlotta smiles, "You like the sound of that, methinks." The woman wraps the shawl more tightly about her, and walks to the door. "Think on it, child," she says, "I must be on my way—noon traffic, you must understand." She gestures for Belle to follow her outside. Once a fair distance from the house, she continues, "You know Hangman's Tree, girl?"

She nods, "Aye, I know it."

"That's my place, have you leave to come after dark."

Belle's eyes narrow, "Yes, why?"

"After supper and before the wee hours, 'tis when I'm least called upon. You'd do well to get your pay then, after I've made another day's wages." Her eyes flit back to the house, "I thought your father'd not like the idea of his little Belles out and about with the highwaymen and whores."

Carlotta smirks, but Belle makes no expression to the milk name, nor the coarse speech, "I'll come to you then, before the midnight hour."

"Good," the woman says with a nod, "I must be off—business never sleeps, as they say." She disappears into the woods, leaving Belle alone.

* * *

Belle waits on pins and needles, more anxious than she's been in days—since the Dark One's discovery of her past—for night to fall and her father to retire to bed. Finally, after eating, Maurice lies down to bed, and his daughter slips quietly from the hut, locking the door behind her.

She navigates the forest with an ease she'd never have imagined when first she came to the village. She arrives at Hangman's Tree sooner than she'd expected—so it comes as no surprise, when she hears _noises of the night_, that Carlotta still hosts a costumer. Doing her best to stay silent, Belle hides a good distance off, behind a tree to wait.

It's not the first that she's walked in on an intimate couple. She remembers back, to the Captain and the young aide-de-camp.

She'd worried that night that she'd be late to the strategy meeting, held in the captain's tent. It's her first night in the army camp, and she's nervous enough, without making a name for herself as tardy or incompetent. When she arrives, she opens the tent flap without thought, and the sight shocks her.

On the cot, facing away from the door, the Captain kneels, holding the hips of the aide-de-camp, their fast movements and breathy sounds making it obvious that she's walked in on a moment of passion.

Blushing beat red and feeling the pulse on her brow and in her neck she stumbles out of the tent, panting. She stalks away, away from the human sounds—the most human of sounds that so strangely sound so much more like animals—when a rowdy laughter startles her for the second time.

Belle jumps, her head turning to find the source. She spots three men sitting around a nearby campfire. She recognizes one as the Lieutenant who had escorted her and the machine pieces from Avonlea to the battlefront, as well as the Field Marshal, whom she had met upon her arrival. The third man, his face appears familiar, but she knows him not. He's handsome, older than she, but less than most of those in High Command. His features are light, and his hair, she thinks a dirty sort of yellow, like a washcloth in need of changing—it's not an ugly color, but that's simply what it looks like. With half a smile, he says to her, "We generally wait for the Captain to call for us."

This brings a fresh round of chuckles, and she walks closer to the light. "He said to be at the meeting at nightfall," she speaks evenly, as she'd been told earlier that day.

The man leans up toward her, "Yes, and as you see, he's a bit preoccupied at the moment." Looking to the other two men, "Or perhaps he's something of a voyeur." They chuckle loudly, and the unknown man takes in Belle's drawn line of a mouth. He then chuckles out, "So, you're an innocent after all."

"Why wouldn't I be?"

The man shrugs, "One hears thing, and beside Southland's son looked rather devastated." He makes a pained expression, and Belle realizes he's mocking her.

"We were friends, as children," she explains, her tone cold.

"Of course, your pardon for any offense, madam." He gives her a half bow, but the joking smile betrays him.

"Pay him no mind," the Lieutenant says, waving the other man off, "The only thing faster than the doctor's hand is his mouth."

The men all take delight in that, and the Field Marshall raises his ale mug to clank it against the Lieutenant's, "Too true, too true."

The camp doctor, she remembers then. She'd been told that there was only one, in the whole of the camp, and apparently this was he. Still, physician of no, the quip sits ill with her. Belle doesn't like to be at the wrong end of a joke. It reminded her too much of her noble cousins and too many summers of teasing.

She opens her mouth to ask him just exactly why he thinks himself free to such allowances, but at that moment the tent flap swings open and the aide-de-camp, a young boy, scrambles out and into the dark, followed by the captain, looking cold as ever, who calls to them. "The devil are you fools waiting on? Rather be up the whole of the night talking strategy or do you want to sleep? Make haste, now."

The three men amble to their feet and walk to the tent, Belle along with them, but a hand on her elbow stops her. The man leans close, so no other hears, "Truly, I was only speaking in jest. I meant no harm."

She looks from his face to his hand at her arm. He doesn't remove it, though the hold is feather-light, "We have so little these days, you see, to smile about," he tells her and the boyish nature of the expression softens her, if only a small measure.

"It's fine."

The smile deepens, "Good." He releases her and together they walk to the tent. He holds the flap back for her, and allows her to enter first.

* * *

She waits, awkwardly forcing herself to stand still. She'd not move out of discomfort and anxiety, only to have the clandestine couple hear.

After a few moments more, she hears the rummaging of clothing being righted, and coins changing hands (though no kiss farewell). She waits, peeking out at the crossroads from her hiding place, and at last sees a lone man emerge. He looks from side to side, in a lazy way and begins the slow walk back to the village. Once he's out of sight, Belle wonders best how to make her presence known.

"You're early," the unseen Carlotta calls.

She frowns, and stepping into the open of the street, she walks closer to Hangman's Tree. "Not on purpose."

The woman steps farther into the street, running a hand through her tousled (graying) curls. Belle notes the darkness that collects on her fingertips and realizes her nails are painted now, like the traders from the distant shores, the ones she met when she'd traveled around the summer fairs with her father. "'Tis no matter to me," the woman smirks, "Did you learn something?"

Belle frowns, "I need no lessons in love-making."

"Is that so," Carlotta says, but then turns serious. She turns back to the brush, "Come away from the road, lest someone take the wrong idea."

As she and Belle tramp through the underbrush, the sellslove says, "So, you serve the old spinner." It's no question.

"Aye, I do."

"And?"

"And what?"

"'And what,'" the woman says with a scoff, "I mean to ask, do you lie with him?"

"No," she says, firmly, "no, I'm only his maid."

"Only?" the woman laughs, "oh, you are young, aren't you."

Belle bristles at the woman speaking down to her, "Speak plainly, madam."

Carlotta chuckles, "Just listen to that high speech." The woman's lip curls and tilting her head, she observes in an objective way, "You're young and pretty, very." She leans against a tree, looking no more pressured to explain herself to Belle than before, "I rather thought I might have a bit of competition in you."

"Me?"

"Aye, you—young, pretty and poor," she ticks off on her painted fingers. "All the key ingredients to turn a woman into a whore, but you've your spinner, now, I suppose. My costumers are safe, for a few more years yet."

"What's this to do with hair potion?" she asks, in a rude tone.

Carlotta chuckles and it's a sweet sound, in the dark night below Hangman's Tree, "Nothing, but in my line of work, I hear things." She pauses and appraises Belle, both their heads uncovered, "You say you only serve your spinner, but I know better. You play with his son; he watches over your lunatic father."

"There's misdeed in that?" Belle counters.

"No, 'course not, but child, well it looks to me that you play house."

Her eyes go wide, "I what?"

"Play house," Carlotta twitters, "pretend you're wife and mother."

Belle moves to shake her head, but stops herself, seeing that perhaps the older woman makes a point. "I'm just his maid."

"I know, but keep _playing _and eventually, mark my words, I'll be not the only one to come to the same ideas."

"The village?"

She shrugs, "the village, but more importantly your spinner." Carlotta looks thoughtful for a moment, and Belle wonders what she mulls over, in her head, "You know, he'll ask to lie with you. Only a matter of time, really." She pauses, and then adds, "they all do."

Belle weighs her words, weighs her memories, and she of all people knows the truth to the statement: _they all do_. "Yes, I know."

"How will you answer?"

Belle scoffs, "No idea."

"You'd best decide, and soon at that." Carlotta smiles, perhaps the most unguarded, the most kind, she's been all evening, "Would you want to?"

It's a question without malice, but it still catches Belle off guard. The girl's mouth gapes open, and after a moment, the other shrugs her shoulders, "Tell me or not, I don't care."

"I—I might." Belle speaks out, "We talk, at times, and I forget the rest of it."

"The rest?"

She frowns, "He's petty and short-tempered. Powers gone straight to his head, but," Belle sighs, "he's not a bad man." Belle knows bad men and Rumpelstiltskin's not one of them.

The older woman toys with her bosom, and says, almost to herself, "Aye, true enough even if he did kill Hordor and all his men besides."

"_He's_ the bad man," she says, remembering the sheer happiness he felt upon condemning a widower's only child to potentially die on the battlefield—the first of many, as it were.

"Oh, child, I know," Carlotta assures, but then notes the question in Belle's expression and shakes her head, "No, not like that. 'Twas my luck that I'm a bit old for his tastes." Carlotta then asks, "Where you there the day the spinner brought the children back?"

The stranger shakes her head, "No, I wasn't."

"Well, it was a sight, I'll give you that."

The maid nods, and after a moment of listening to the wind, the prostitute says, "I've a man coming soon. Let's be done."

She and Belle trade coin for color, and quickly enough she's on her way through the wood, but like the new weight in her pocket, her thoughts weigh heavy on her tired feet. The sellslove's put thoughts in her head, and fears, what's more. She walks home wondering about desires and decisions (and if she even has either of those anymore).

* * *

Sometimes, the girl arrives before he awakens. For instance, on the nights where he's sat at his desk working away, more than once burning through an entire candle, on those morrows, he lays in bed as she moves about in his house, on his floors. She tries to be quiet (doesn't always succeed—he knows her to be rather clumsy from time to time).

This morning, she's quiet.

She's earlier than usual, for very little light streams in through the windows. He lies there, in his bed, separated from her sight by a closed curtain, made from a thick burgundy fabric. When closed, it leaves only room for his bed, the trunk at the footboard, and the shelves to its side.

Rumpelstiltskin imagines what she does, his little maid, as she skitters about, pots clanking lightly, the fire crackling, as she builds it back up. He listens, and imagines how she looks.

He imagines, and hardly realizes when the rustling occurs just the other side of the partition. He holds his breath and listens.

Her hand creates a slightly rustling noise, as it draws back the fabric—his ears ring with it. He waits, eyes squeezed shut, and he knows her to stand in the opening, checking to see if he's awake, he presumes.

After a moment, she steps fully into his makeshift bedchamber.

He listens as Belle gingerly steps away from the bed, to the trunk, and slowly, carefully, he peeks at her, watches as she lifts the trunk and puts away a few folded and mended linens, returns a book to the shelf, picks up a stray sock from the floor. Before she turns back, he shuts his eyes again. Now, in the dark, he waits to hear the curtain rustle, signaling her exit.

The sound never comes.

Instead, he hears another rustling of cloth—she's put a hand to his blanket, just to the side of his foot. He waits, and finally the rustling happens again: she takes a step closer, her hand moving forward.

She does this thrice more, and Rumpelstiltskin hardly hears the sound for the pounding in his ears, but as her hand arrives at the side of his leg, just above his knee, he realizes her aim and almost groans for it: she's after the dagger, at last. Internally he notes a sudden pain, for he'd always known it would come to this, but had wished it otherwise.

He'd have to kill her now.

The rustling occurs again, and suddenly, he feels her fingers skirting his thigh. She's touching him, and her hand doesn't stop. She keeps dragging it ever upward. Clever thief, but no matter, he'd not fall for her wiles.

The maid drags her hand torturously slow up the outside of his thigh, over his hip bone, across his flank (and it's all he can do not to jump and laugh, for the flesh there's sensitive to such a caress), but as she grips the blanket to pull it back, to find the dagger hidden at the sheath tied round his waist, he grips her wrist.

The girl gasps, but he doesn't let her go, instead tightening his hold. He keeps her close, as he leans up on his other elbow. "Don't look so surprised: You didn't think I'd just let you have what you're after."

Belle frowns (and she's without her cap, he notes) and then smiles. "You mean you don't want me, Rumpelsitltskin?" she asks.

He blinks up at her, dumbfounded at the question, "What did you say?"

With her other hand she points to his hidden manhood. They both can see it tents the covers, an overt answer to the question. "I think you want me," she says it like she's accomplished something, and rather pleased about it at that. She bites her bottom lip after she says it.

"I—" he begins, mouth dry, completely dry. He stops because he has to tell her no, because of dagger and Bae and a million other reasons. He nods instead, "Aye, I want you."

She giggles and leans down, the hand captured in his wrist touching his cheek, balancing him, as she kisses his jaw, followed by his neck.

Gasping, in reflex, he releases her hand—forgets she has a hand—until it lands on his stomach, and then-as he gulps, wondering doubting, _hoping_—she touches him, her little hand warm beneath his blankets and trousers. "Rumpelstiltskin," she says.

His head falls back with a groan, as he closes his eyes, completely lost to her, her hand, _to Belle—_

Rumpelstiltskin yells out, as he kicks himself awake.

Looking around frantically, trying to catch his breath, he realizes with relief (and disappointment) that he's alone.

He throws back the covers, sitting at the edge of the bed. Gasping, he runs a hand over his sweaty brow and through his wild hair. It's not yet dawn, just before, rather, and he's alone in his bed, alone in his house, except for Baelfire.

It was just a dream, he realizes, his head falling, chin to his chest. Though, when he looks down, he curses under his breath. He's still hard, it would seem. Not unknown to the problems of the mornings, Rumpelstiltskin frowns. It's a minor inconvenience, but not a terrible problem.

Truly, the mornings are the least of his problems, it would seem.

* * *

The days pass by in gentle repetition, and strangely, Belle cannot call herself unhappy. It's the first time, in some time, that she can't call herself such, that things are somewhat _good_.

So Belle knows that trouble stands not a stone's throw away.

She waits for it, the unknown trouble. It simmers in the back of her mind, not exactly present, but never quite absent, either. It lingers, waiting, and as she knows it's been want to do before, it waits for that unexpected moment to strike.

It sits idly in the back of her mind as she sits on a short stool, with a bucket between her legs, peeling potatoes one afternoon. Her fingers sport the wet grit from the peelings, and she remembers why exactly she hates peeling potatoes. As she takes a moment to push the piece of hair that's escaped her white cap back with her forearm, she looks across the room to where Baelfire works at her father's spinning wheel.

He's learning the art of spinning this season, and she can't help but smile at the quickstudy he's proving to be.

She wipes her hands on her apron, and dropping knife and half-peeled potato into the bucket Belle decides to take a break. She walks over to watch him labor. It fascinates her, the movement of the wheel, and she can see how he aims for his father's deft, memorized actions.

Of course, he's only a boy and still learning; she spots the knot before he notes it himself.

"Careful, Bae," she warns.

Baelfire dashes forward tugging at the knots, but in his haste, he knocks the bobbin loose. In the a flurry, rushing forward to catch the falling part (which he does, but Belle gasps, seeing what's going to happen before it actually occurs, unable to do a thing to prevent it—a common problem for her) he stabs his finger on the sharp spindle.

"_Ah!_" the little boy cries out, sticking his bleeding finger in his mouth, dropping the bobbin a second time.

The bobbin and dirtied spindle roll about on the wood floor, Belle picks them up and after wiping the needle, puts them back into place on the wheel. "Bae, are you alright?" she asks, taking the boy's wrist, to see how deep the wound goes.

He hisses as the air hits his finger—but she can see that it's not terribly deep, not even enough to merit a bandage, though, sometimes, it's the little cuts that hurt the most—and under his breath curses, "Fucking quim."

Without thought, Belle drops his hand and slaps his cheek.

The movement's largely instinctual, and more sound than sensation at that. In the silence following the bellowing snap, it takes a moment for Belle to realize what she's just done. She gasps, eyes wide and a hand (the hand) covers her mouth.

She's just struck the son of the Dark One.

Baelfire's eyes too, widen as his hand rubs at his blushed cheek, mouth gaping, as he looks up at her, completely shocked. When he turns to look at her, with his dark eyes, she forces her shoulders back (she won't apologize, for the mild correction, no matter whose son he is). However, in the boy's eyes she see remorse—and worry.

"We won't tell Papa," he says instantly, the smart lad, well-knowing, like Belle what his father's response would be to such actions.

"Won't tell me what?" Rumpelstiltskin's voice calls from the doorway.

Belle's eyes go wide, and she tries to shut him out, but everything is Rumpelstiltskin (not the spinner, the _Dark One_), and she can just see it now, feel the coming magic, the smashing of her bones.

"It's just, I think you'll be angry," the boy says, haltingly, and Belle thinks, _damn, the prick's taking payback_. That's her first thought, followed quickly by, _I see his father in him._

Then she relaxes. _Well, if I'm to die_, she thinks, _at least I'll know it was in the efforts at raising the child up right._

"Angry about what, son?" the father asks, intrigued and more than a little excited.

Bae's eyes flit between servant and master.

"Go on," the Dark One urges.

Belle sighs, "It's fine, Bae. Tell him." She won't beg. She didn't beg the Dukes of the Southlands and Frontlands, and she certainly isn't going to beg her life from the son of a spinner.

But then, Baelfire's a quick boy and learned a long time ago that apologies, excuses and pleas make no difference to his father, or to the Dark One, rather. Instead, he chooses a medium his father excels at: deception.

"Bae?" the father says, taking a few steps into the house.

"It's my reading lessons." Bae looks sheepish, but proud too. "She says I'm better than you at my letters now." The boy positively beams.

_Gods above_. Belle thinks, but has enough sense to feign embarrassment.

"Is this true?" he asks her.

She shrugs her shoulders, but then looks over at Rumpelstiltskin, pulling her head down between her shoulders, like the snapping tortoise hidden inside its shell, "Well, he does practice a lot more than you."

The imp falls for it, or perhaps, the one who falls is the doting, proud father. "He should be better. He's my son, after all." Then he smiles; he dares to look positively _human_—except of course those teeth. Try as she might, she can't get him to use the branch.

"That makes him smarter." He grabs his son about the shoulders and rubs his hair encouragingly. "Keep up the good work, Bae." He gives his son another pat on the back, before turning to the maid, "And you as well, Belle."

She blinks, still a bit stunned.

"Keep up. The good work, that is," he adds.

"Yes sir," she says, and Belle smiles at them, for an instance, imaging they are just a simple well-to-do village father and son for whom she works.

She imagines she didn't almost die today, imagines that there aren't problems on the horizon, that her father isn't ill more often than not, that there's no magic, no Dark One, no war, just a family and a job with the whole of summer before them.


End file.
